Feel free to ignore my last couple of posts. I didn't want to be the newbie with the annoying question that's easily answered providing he just read on but that's exactly who I was. I've just read so much tonight and had so many conflicting things that I just couldn't take another contradiction to throw me off track again. I've found the one I'm happy with and I'm going to see how that fares.
Thanks anyway guys, I know you would have been here for me if needed.

You must have discovered the difference between defatting and pulling

I've always made DMT freebase, but I hate freeze prepping so I always evaporate. I'm sick of wasting the solvent and waiting.. So I just started to salt with HCL. The first time I salted was recently on a San Pedro extraction, pic attached. Product came out great, but was eaten opposed to smoked.

Are DMT acetate/HCL and DMT freebase completely different? Can you smoke DMT acetate as you would freebase. or does the 'acetate' just mean is came from a acidic solution and 'freebase' mean it came from a basic solution.

The reason I ask is that I do dry Teks and use Ca(OH)2 to base.

I'd like to salt out with 50ml of HCL/water and evap that and be done, BUT if the spice must be in freebase form than since I would have a liquid (hcl soulution + DMT) I would base with maybe 10g of NaOH, then pull with 50ml of solvent and evap that.

Basically just trying to reduce the amount of solvent I have to evap. I do many pulls and end up with 500+ml solvent.

Would I lose product through these extra 2 steps? or can I just have a finished product from salting.

but with freeze precipitation you keep the solvent afterwards and an reuse it.. after evap its gone..

Extraction 1: San Pedro Alkaloid Extraction For Dummies – Erowid
https://www.erowid.org/plants/cacti/cacti_chemistry2.shtml

Cactus: approx. 18” of 13cm diameter fresh Peruvian Torch.

Aqueous extraction with acidic water. Distilled white vinegar (what was on hand) to bring the ph down to about 4.

Then xylene to de-fat. I never noticed any fat layer in these steps except a few tiny drops of oil between layers, but the layers separated well other than that.

Basification with sodium hydroxide to a ph of around 10.

Extracted the free bases with xylene, then distilled white vinegar straight, to hopefully form some sort of alkaloid salts.

Used a little vinegar at a time but still went a bit overboard and the end result seemed to have too much vinegar because the ph was around 4. The vinegar was quite cloudy though so it seemed encouraging.

Evaporated in pyrex dish next to a fan. Ended up with nice clear crystals floating on a orange tinted oil (result of unsuccessful de-fatting?). I may have been able to get those crystals off the top before that oil dried. But, the whole thing ended up being scraped and mixed and dried thoroughly in a food dehydrator.

Ended up with a strange looking substance with nice crystals mixed with a waxy resin like san pedro tar.

Edible?





The pic quality isn't great, sry. The flash was washing it out then the ambient light wasn't great, tried a flashlight.


Extraction 2: http://andyb.netlsd.com/mesc_extraction.html


Cactus: what was left over from my previous two “tea” attempts, dried to powder. I should have weighed it at that stage, I know now. But using this stuff was kind of a practice run, and to see if perhaps the soaking in lye with xylene wold get any goodies left in there.

I do know it was around 9 lbs. altogether when it was fresh San Pedro. What that works out to in dried after being boiled once previously...

Using vinegar again to form salts, thinking vinegar is so weak, I went overboard and ended up with a slightly acidic cloudy solution.

Here's where I when awol on the directions though and tried adding a little baking soda to neutralize the ph.

I know, never toss together anything super dangerous that you don't fully understand. But, a little baking soda to neutralize vinegar water seemed harmless. I didn't make sodium acetate though did I?

When about neutral, it was into the pyrex pan for a day or so to fully evaporate. Ended up with a beautiful pan of sparkly crystals that were clear as ice in some places and sort of whitish in others, plus the yield was a lot more than expected at a just over 12 grams.

So, what got created here, anyone? Crystals have a ph of about 5 or 4.. They don't taste salty, maybe a tiny bit sour and bitter. What are they?

Edible?




P.S. Just so you guys know, I don't plan on doing this weird a/b extraction stuff with vinegar again. Next time I would get Citric or HCL I think. But, I'm even more leaning towards the food safe methods and the oil extraction method I just learned about here. Thanks for any input on my current experiments though.

I just watched the first MIT Reaction Work-Up video. Very nice, thanks. It seems everything was done correctly (except that baking soda thing ). Apparently a sep funnel makes things much easier.

Here is what is hopefully a better question.

The lye being the thing I'm most worried about in the methods I described carrying over, and I made absolutely sure none of that lye layer ever got into anything else and even discarded a little good stuff to make sure.

Plus, the final salt making part with vinegar ended up being a little too acidic in the end. So, doesn't that mean there couldn't possibly be any lye in the end results?

All the xylene is definitely gone so, whatever's left should be good, no?

My only other question is whether or not adding baking soda to the vinegar at the end to neutralize it could have done anything bad.

Thank you.

Alright you slow mofos I'm just going to eat it and see what happens. As far as I know it's clean so... here I go.

Don't know if anyone here gives a frak but I might as well post my experiences just in case I die because I'm an idiot and y'all are busy.


yay. I'm excited. Makes me feel young again. Bottoms up. Bottles to the ground.

this is now officially the "go f yourself" forum or maybe nobody's at the helm. Either way it's pretty lame so far.

Did you check your PM yet or are you too 'slow mofo' for that too?

Also, we like people here to do their home work and check things for themselves before asking basic questions. So that this will not become a place where you are spoon-fed but where in the end you are able to help yourself.

We have a rather nice FAQ btw.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

pm? no, I've been trying to decypher Bob's message for ME

Bob, the bob, the bestest bob who whas ever a bob.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIj5PpR5D5Y


the waiting is fine you lovely bastards. I love you anyway

Check this: PM

And then come to the CHAT you silly one and you get all the answers.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

You fluffy one, like I havn't read that and the all the other stickies and most of the techs and still found you wanting to answer my basic questions about my acetic acid.

funky, but if you are here now finally maybe I won't leave forever and take my wisdom elsewhere. no pressure just stop being silly myself and be real already!

And, now I'm in trouble with Dr. lovely Who. Lovely. Hey, it's your forum.

Just for my curiosity, what wisdom are we talking about here?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Thanks for the link bewakening. Whats with the sycho attitude?

I'm pretty new to this site, sorry if I'm breaking etiquette, don't know where to ask this. etc. etc.

My friend is currently on what he hopes to be the final stretch of a small Chaliponga extract (about 70-80 grams). He did a pretty standard A/B using white vinegar at pH 4, did about a dozen defats with naphtha, basified with NaOH, did several warm naphtha pulls and threw it in the freezer.

Because he's impatient, he took it out to look at it after only about 8 hours or so, poured some through a filter, saved what had already crystallized out, and put the rest in the jar and back into the freezer. He then had about 100-150 mg of spice on a coffee filter and was very very pleasantly surprised that it was not gooey or oily at all (everything he's read about chaliponga extracts led him to believe he'd end up with some goo), it looks like many batches of spice that he has used (with great success) but it has a faint smell of lye. He skipped any sort of washing step, because he trusted that he was able to prevent any of his aqueous layer from getting into his non polar solution, and now regrets doing so. He put the 150 mg or so back into the naphtha, heated it to redissolve, and he's now baking some sodium bicarbonate in the oven in order to do a polar wash but he's very nervous about it, considering what will already likely be a very small yield.

We've all heard the horror stories of spice disappearing somewhere in the process of doing a polar wash, which he assumes is likely from the pH of the water being too low, too long of exposure to the solvent, or just plain too much water. He has a digital pH meter, so the pH isn't a problem, but he's very nervous about doing this wash.

All of this info leads to his question(s) (I know you guys love having plenty of info when you try to answer questions).

A. What is the real risk of not doing any sort of wash, aside from the smoke maybe being harsh? I've done considerable searching but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the risk of residual lye in your spice. It vaporizes at absurdly high temperatures, but you can apparently inhale the dust of it and still have some harm done. If anyone has a dependable answer, it would be appreciated.

B. I'm limited in the choice of containers to use, and I'm worried about not being able to separate all of my polar layer from my solvent during this wash, due to not having something tall and skinny enough to make it easy. And I don't have any epsom salt to dry my solvent with. Does anyone know any other tricks to solve the problem of ending up with some water in your solvent? I've heard of freeze separation, but I'm worried that if the water stays in contact with the solvent for too long, some of the freebase will salt and migrate into it.

I now realize that my friends name changed to "I" part way through this thread.

That's really what we call him. Honest.

I guess time gave me my answers (or rather eliminated the need for my question)

I baked some sodium bicarbonate in the oven (works like a charm) and did my wash with the resulting sodium carbonate, mastered the trick of using my medicine dropper as a sep funnel, eliminating the problem of not having the right shaped container, and hopefully was able to clean my solvent up nicely, and stuck it back in the freezer

Turns out having a little bit of water in my freeze precip jar didn't do any harm. I was partially worried that the solution would be so saturated that the dmt would crash out and fall to the bottom before it was cold enough to freeze the water, but I don't believe that happened.

My jar's in the freezer so I can't comment on the product quality yet (did peek a little bit though, looks nice). It's pretty yellow. Looks like the spice everyone used to get before anyone learned how to clean things up. But compared to the oily mess that I've heard of people getting from Chaliponga extracts, I'd say it was a success. So if anyone wants advice on how to do an A/B with Chaliponga leaves: DEFAT DEFAT DEFAT DEFAT DEFAT, and then defat some more. I did probably 12 warm naphtha pulls with about 20-30 mL each time (in about 900 mL of acetic acid solution after soaking about 100 grams of leaves) and it seems to have done the trick. I certainly could have done more but who has the time for that

Hi Nexus
I have been immersing myself in the nexus for extraction help for my friend. He is using Acuminata bark, found a stump that was already chopped clean down (?) and the bark was just hanging off the tree so he literally picked it up with his hands and got himself around 500 grams of bark without having to harm any plants which he was glad with.

This is his 3rd extraction using the dmt handbook. He completed it about 10 hours ago, but some things went wrong.
Details: 3 x 1.5 hour acid cook in ph 4 water and vinegar solution, filtered, combined and reduced further down to about 1.75 L's
Then he used enough caustic soda to turn the red liquid into a darker, almost black solution. Unfortunately the $50 digital pH metre he bought was showing the 200 grams of caustic soda mixed in with a small amount of water to have a pH of 12.1??? It was completely off. He calibrated it many times. Basically he couldn't work out if he used enough caustic soda to get it to a pH of 14 so he used about 150 grams or so. He was a bit worried about not using enough, it seems to be a common problem with the DMT handbook tek?

So then he put it in a hot water bath and added about 75ml (didn't really know how much to use) but he could barely see a layer of shellite separating.
Also the container was not expanding very rapidly any more. So he added another 50 grams of caustic soda (to make a total of 200 grams) and added another 60mls of shellite.

Then after shaking it for a while it separated, siphoned out the bark tea but was only left with about 50 ml's of it???
So where did the rest of the shellite go? Did 2 more pulls with 300mls shellite and each time only about 1/3 of the shellite separated....


That shellite, after 10 hours freeze precip has got some white crystals, probably only about .5 grams, but the shellite has started to finally separate from the solution now, looks like most of it has separated. Whats going on? Not basic enough?

Can he get the rest of the dmt out? Cold pulls? Add more caustic soda?