Good morning to everyone,

After being fortunate enough to come across this amazing molecule one day, Swim has been lurking around this forum going about his business, collecting information researching various extraction techniques. So now Swim guesses it's about time to show his face, figuratively speaking.

Not long after trying DMT, Swim managed to obtain 50g's powdered MHRB and went about a STB extraction (Noman's Tek). It went amazingly! Swim let the lye and MHRB mingle for 2 hours or so and then took 4 pulls straight off. Whilst researching Swim had noticed a wide variety of result yields varying from 0 - 1.7% and told himself to be be happy with 1% (but obviously wanted 1.5%). So when the yield came back as 1.16% Swim was more than happy and thought he was the most amazing chemist ever ;-)

However....The next time MHRB was obtained it came in Bark form. First of all, again using the Nomans tek Swim decided to process 100g this time but was lazy about it. Instead of grinding into powder Swim made a presumption that the bark would break down (fairly) quickly, due to the high PH of the lye solution and just broke the bark into 1-1.5cm squared pieces and let sit in the solution. 7 days after soaking Swim had several attempts at pulling from the solution with no success. Swim noticed the MHRB\Lye solution was no where near the same viscosity as the previous and basically still the consistency of water (probably due to whole bits of bark still sitting at the bottom of the jar).

So, Swim tries again and this time grinds the bark in a liquidizer. He managed to get it down to powder mixed with a fibrous stringy type matter. Again, added to the lye left over night and tried again. This time there was maybe two or three microscopic crystals on the glass tray after freeze precipitation, but not enough to smoke or even warrant scraping the dish out for. One thing Swim noticed though is the Naptha from which Swim pulled this nominal amount was decanted back into a jar to store in the freezer. After 12 hours in there it had produced more crystals in the jar, still only a small quantity but far more than Swim had got on the original freeze precipitation.

Any ideas why this would happen? Swim is quite frustrated at the moment but is thinking perhaps it is patience that is required. Is this generally a problem that occurs when using bark after the convenience and hassle free method of pre-powdered MHRB. Swim certainly hopes so...

You could well have obtained Trunk Bark...rather than root bark...which has little to no active content.
It is a worrying trend at the moment.
Of course powdering does give bark the best chance to release the desirables.

Thanks for your reply Cyb.

After looking into the Trunk bark mentioned, it is looking worryingly like some pictures Swim found in another thread dated around the same time Swims would have been delivered. Swim will leave everything stewing for a few more days then retry a pull, failing that contact the vendor and see what they have to say about it.

Hmm...