Well, last night I finally got to work on my first extraction. Doing everything right, except for skipping a 2nd defat which didn't seem to harm my product, I managed to get a quite decent pull of DMT - At least 500mg.

When I saw this in the freezer, I was very excited. I immediately took the pan out and placed it in my enclosed garage, where I let a fan blow over it on 3 speed.

All is going well, the crystals are stationary and stuck to the glass.

I come back 5 minutes later and the product is still drying up. The crystals are still in the pan.

10 minutes later, I come back to check on the product. It's dry all right. In fact, the whole pan is empty!

This being my first extraction, I frantically look around for where the crystals might've collected, but it was no use. They were dispersed into oblivion. My first work had gone so successful, just to have it disappear in the very end. This was very frustrating. I was pretty convinced that those crystals would stick to the pan...

Lesson learned: Keep your fan on 1 speed. Better yet, don't even use a fan!

Ahhh that's brutal man. Yeah it's the little things you don't really think about that will get you at the start.

My crystals like to stick to the glass though, IME. I can stand the dish straight up against a wall with the fan not but 2-3 inches from it blowing directly at it on high speed (3), and even after an hour or more, all the naptha is gone and the crystals still stick to the glass. I have to give it a good scrape to harvest.

Interesting that our crystals behave so differently. What Tek did you use?

http://www.psychonaut.co...t-easy-low-cost-way.html

I've tried the tek again with my last 100g of root bark and it's in the freezer at the moment, hoping I didn't use too much NaOH as I pulled out a few undissolved crystals in the NPS. I filtered these crystals out with a coffee filter before pouring the NPS into the freezing pan.

It may not have actually been the fan that caused the crystals to vanish, however; I read in another thread that someone's crystals "Melted." I've never before heard a case like this and that worries me; is there a way to prevent this from happening?

What is the ambient temperature in your enclosed garage (and while it is enclosed you also had them out of direct sunlight also, yeah)?

Direct sunlight will mess your drying xtals right up. Behind a pane of glass (enclosed) even moreso

I'm a little confused. If you decided to go with the freezer precipitation route, I'm not sure why you've chosen to then evaporate. Simply filter off the non-polar solvent and let them dry. If you want, you can then re-x and evap, but I personally choose the freeze precip route specifically to avoid pesky problems that arise with evaporation. If the crystals sit in solvent for even a little bit, and they're not in the freezer, they will start to melt quite quickly.

Global, I used to find before I changed my method that sometimes, depending on the purity of the crystals and the temperature, you need to fan them dry before they melt.

Fear, congratulations on your success and commiserations on the tragic irony. It's all down to experience eh ?

@ZenSpice I'd say my garage was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit at the time and so yes I assume they melted; I did not read anywhere that this could happen to the crystals prior to my extraction though so I just cleaned out what was left in the pan.

@Global, well, in the newbie guide I'm using here it suggested that I freeze and then evap the extra NPS;; I'm actually not sure if it would work better the other way around but it seems like it would take a hell of a lot longer to evap that much solvent.

Right now my 2nd extraction has gone half swimmingly; I did the same process as before without using a fan and I currently have a glass container of white goop sealed up in my cabinet. Should I freeze this again or just let it finish drying out?

I would leave it to dry someplace nice and cool if possible.. I have some very fine yellow goo from my final extraction drying at the moment.

Expect it to take a few days

Shit... What if I wanted to smoke it sometime like right now?

Well one could always smoke the stuff now but it can be hard to handle 'as-is'..

I personally prefer to let it "waxen up" (for want of a better descriptor) but if you can get some loaded then why not.

Working out dosage might be a bit of a chore though

Best of luck

Edit: If you can smell any solvent at all, then really is best to wait.

if all the naphtha has evaped you could dissolve the goo in some IPA then infuse some herb, its then much easier to handle than goo and also fool proof to smoalk.

Top tip from 3rdI

I use a home-made machine personally (so have to pre-melt into coarse wire wool) but if changa is your aim then you can save the wait with his advice.

Weigh the material prior to adding to the IPA then weigh after its all mixed and the IPA fully evaporated, the difference in weight will show how much spice is in the final infusion.