How long does one reasonably have to agitate a solution + solvent when pulling alkaloids out of the solution? My friend has done 400 end-over-end turns with a few mason jars. Is this excessive? It amounts to about 8 minutes of continuous agitation when put together before separating out the solvent.

Thanks.

Yeah 400 is a bit excessive.
30 secs of rolling, then separate, repeat x 4 should be plenty

Migration is fairly rapid but the solvent needs to 'touch' every part of the based mix.
See HERE

Probably excessive but until this is specifically tested, rather better do more agitations than fewer, and make sure most alkaloids have been pulled... You don't want to waste alkaloids....

You can also buy a magnetic stirrer and make your life easier.

Another thing it would be nice if someone did was a small experiment to, before the first pull, divide the whole basified plant solution in two, and do a quick pull on one, a longer more thorough pull on another. Then retrieve alkaloids from both pulls separately and weigh and let us know You could even put the two basified mix jars together after that, to make everything easier, as one single pull would already be a good enough comparison to have an idea

How does a magnetic stirrer make life easier?

This experiment will be done soon and results will be posted.

Some cleaning up of equipment and glassware was performed today with Xylene. Part of this process entailed about a pint of collected bong water from a bong that had been used to smoke marijuana and to vape spice.

The water was an off-color (shadowed and orange tint to it) to begin with when the xylene was added. The xylene was a clear layer sitting on top of the water, colored by its alkaloids and mj resin.

The mason jar containing the bong water with actives and xylene mix was turned end-over end 50 times, approximately 5 times for a total of 250 turns.

The mason jar was heated in a warm water bath, whose hot water was replenished a couple of times. It was observed the xylene gradually took on the color of the bong water, and the bong water cleared up to a more white/translucent color. However, this transfer took several turns at end-over-end agitation.

I thought this report might be of interest because unlike MHRB solution (or whatever), which is dark colored and prevents one from seeing the hue/color caused by the alkaloids in the solution one is pulling from, this effort at pulling allowed relative transparency and a rough guide to how many more agitations might be required to pull out the alkaloids into the solvent (here, evidenced by the transfer of color from the water to the xylene, until the xylene layer was yellow-orange when held up to back light while the bong water turned clearer).

Conclusion: hot water baths and a few hundred end-over-end agitations may indeed be necessary to retrieve all the alkaloids from your basic solution/leftovers with actives floating around.

Yeah but these are completely different things, bong water dirt, vs alkaloids in freebase form.

also remember DMT and NMT are white/transparent, so solvent picking up color in the case of pulling from mimosa/acacia can be unrelated with amount of alkaloids picked up.


Du57mi73, magnetic stirrer makes your life easier by stirring and mixing the layers automatically and very thoroughly for you without any manual effort. You can leave it on for a few minutes and go do something else in the meanwhile.

And yeah Im curious if you perform the side-by-side agitation test

With SWIMS limited extraction experiance. He has noticed that performing 4 sets of 4-5 min agitation( turning end over end slowly) with an hour or so to settle will get most of the spice first pull. When SWIM leaves the naptha over night on the aquouse it tends to go very dark yellow and pull more oils.
SWIM recomends doing your agitation and pull over one day. Time just seems to force more impurities through.
Peace