SWIM is preparing for his first extraction using the lextek v1 guide. The guide states that the quantity of material (naphtha, sodium hydroxide, etc..) can be scaled in accordance with the amount of material being used. In SWIM's case, he is using 500g of acacia confusa root bark as opposed to the 2000g used in the guide.

This is where SWIM gets confused... If he uses a smaller amount of dmt containing plant material (again, in his case it's 500g) does that mean he has to scale down ALL of the chemical quantities? For example, instead of using 250g of sodium hydroxide would he only use 62.5g? (got this by dividing 250 by 4 due to the fact that 500g is 1/4 of 2000g)

Does SWIM have to scale all of his quantities by 1/4?

The reason SWIM is confused is because if he boils down his material to a few liters (as required in the tek) wouldn't he end up with the same amount of liquid as in the tek?

Basically what I'm trying to ask is: does the material quantity SWIM need rely on how much dmt containing plant material he uses OR does it rely on the amount of liquid he has left after simmering the liquid down to a few liters?

Any help with this matter is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Whilst I've not played with the Lextek I look at it and it all seems a bit excessive. Have you looked at Marsofold?

With regards to ratios, if you are working with 1/4 plant material listed in a tek you would scale the rest down accordingly and use 25% of whatever is listed.

The resulting boiled down acid solution would in this case, yes be 25% of what the tek says.

Edit
Looking at the wiki it seems a note has been added to Lextek

Thank you for the reply, it was extremely helpful. I took a look at the Marsofold tek and found it to be much easier for SWIM. However, would there be a difference in outcome because SWIM is using acacia confusa as opposed to the MHRB used in the tek?

Yes, acacia has too much fat for the Marsofold tek to work as written.

It worked alright for me with Acacia confusa with no defat, although I was using stem bark as opposed to root bark.

Only difference in my extraction routine with confusa was that I left the naphtha for some time at room temp and dropped out crude NMT/DMT mix, decanted naphtha then freeze precipated that to drop out mainly DMT. I think if the naphtha is not so saturated this works better, as very saturated naphtha also drops out DMT at room temp. The oily stuff does dry, just takes some time and a bit of scraping about.

My results weren't incredible in terms of the DMT yield (25% fairly clean DMT crystals to 75% NMT/DMT oil), again whether this was because of the use of stem bark I don't know, I haven't worked with root bark. Re-x via repeated dropping out of the alks at room temp then freeze precipation can gain fairly clean DMT crystals.

Maybe if I try again I will give a go at a round of defat though.

SWIM had the same questions, however she just forged ahead.

One note on the shellite extractions - if one is just following the LexTek verbatim, one might not notice this part until the first pull is complete:

Remember to ensure that
both the solution and Shellite
are HOT to aid in the
extraction. Use a hot water
bath for this.

As this note appears at the END of that section, SWIM didn't do this on the first pull. Just added cold shellite into the solution.

After the second pull however (after heating both the solution AND shellite before mixing) SWIM noticed a great deal of lumpy white matter had formed when the mix had cooled. This is on an original weight of 800gm of Acacia Acumin. A very promising result so far...and much better results than previous forays (which yielded next to nil).

SWIM does have a question however, and it might not be answered before SWIM has to make the last pull, before the next acid wash.

The current pulls, apart from the white lumpy goop, are rather golden. A beer colour. Obviously SWIM still didn't manage to keep all the red gunk out of the pull. How worried should SWIM be about this? Should SWIM just be trying for this white lumpy matter?

Cheerio for any ideas!

I have used Marsofold's tek for ACRB several times in the past. The first couple times, I used the defatting step from Lextek and had good results (decent yield, nice fluffy white crystals). I recently used Marsofold's tek whithout a defat step, and had even better results (higher yield, also nice fluffy white crystals). The bark used in the extractions was all from the same batch. This would indicate that defatting is not necessary when working with acacia confusa rootbark, and could even, perhaps, affect one's yield.

I have had yellow-tinted pulls in the past as well. Along with red-tinted pulls, orange tinted pulls, and purple-tinted pulls. I found that if you mix a weak basic solution of sodium carbonate and distilled water, then add to your NP solvent, mix well, and separate, the aqueous layer washes out a lot of the color and other impurities and the DMT remains in the non-polar solvent. If you used heat and alkaloids are crashing out of the room-temp solvent, you can heat the solvent and the sodium carbonate solution separately, then mix and separate them while they are still warm.

At the end of LEXTEK and without measuring PH, but just going with the LEX ratios (on 800gm of A Acumin matter), SWIM thinks the result is looking very good. Just evaping off the final shellite, after freezing.

Update on drying after freezing precip in LexTek v.1. The bottom of the jar has gone a bit gooey. It smells faintly of shellite, so SWIM is just planning to wait and see what happens next. Anyone else familiar with this?