Hello everyone!

Long time forum browser, first time forum user. Back in the day I learned my first MH tek (simply a Sodium carbonate + IPA tek), and that worked wonders for me. Eventually I extracted enough goodies where it (appeared) like I had enough to last me a lifetime. Sadly, I was wrong about this because this past year I ended up quitting my job and did a bunch of soul searching to figure out where exactly I wanted to go with my life. The bad news - the supply of goodies I have built up over the past few years is completely gone. The good news - after months and months of this introspective lifestyle, I can now say I know exactly what I want to do with my life and where I want to be. Thus I am actually 'starting my new life' in Chicago in about a week or so (once my lease starts on the 15th, I will be moving out of my old life here in Michigan and jumping into a new and completely fresh life in Chicago).

This whole journey I've gone through has brought me back to the nexus for research purposes (I visit all the time just to read peoples individual reports and gather other knowledge for myself, you really have a great community here! I just wish I became a part of it a lot sooner!). As many of you are well aware, Mimosa is harder and harder to come by now in these times. I found this out the hard way when I went to go and try to REMOVED some a month ago and learned all the nasty details to what has become of this beautiful plant within the Government's eye. Thus I spent a bit of time researching your forums and narrowing Acacia Confusa to be the next best plant for me.

Due to my previous history of 'big quantities and big outputs at once' I went on and Mod edit: There is no talk of acquiring here, please read this a kilogram (ACRB) straight from the beautiful state of Hawaii from an awesome and friendly local. I went through many of the teks created by you wonderful guys at the Nexus, and it seems the one I would like to follow is Joshisom's 'Acacia Confusa extraction by yours truly' (exact forum title, link is here: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=44251). I already had a bunch of Caustic Soda from previous 'experiments' and his tek was written in the ideal of using 1kg of ACRB, which is exactly how much I have so I thought this one was perfect for me.

The reason I actually finally made a forum account (once again, sorry I never made one in the past. I'm just a very busy and also semi-paranoid person about having any accounts of mine out there on the internet - I'm basically one of those people who prefers to use the internet like a giant library only hah) is because I had just a couple very simple questions I'd like to have answered before I move on with this tek.

I don't want to ask them here in my 'intro-post' because, quite frankly I'd feel rude hah and feel like I would be breaking some rules as well. So if I ever have the ability, then I could eventually post them on Joshisom's thread. Or perhaps if anyone would like to help me then I could PM them or we could discuss it down below. They are very simple questions, one having to do with a repeating amount, and the other about potential time delay risks between the acid cook and the next basifying part.

Thanks a bunch guys, sorry I know this is quite a detailed 'introduction' but I'm sorry that I never made an account sooner. Like I said before, after making (what seemed like) a lifetimes supply for myself with MHRB then I felt I would only use the nexus as a place to go and read others experiences and ideas - not much with contribution (man, I gotta stop being such an introvert hah). But now that I finally am starting a new life, maybe it's time to change my attitude towards contributing to others on the internet.

Regardless, greetings Nexus members and I wish you all the best during this new year!

Welcome feel free to PM me regarding any questions you don't feel ready to post I'm happy to help you research and offer up any knowledge I've found so far in my own endeavors.

Mod edit: New members cannot PM each other.

Thanks Mimosa, and sorry Mod - I wasn't 100% sure of the rules. Thanks for clearing them up for me .

But I guess I will post my question here, just because I feel it is so simple and I'm just over-thinking it.

In the tek I want to follow, one step confuses me about repeating the steps above it. It doesn't clearly state if you repeat it exactly (as in add another fresh amount of water (3600ml) and another fresh amount of vinegar (400ml) for the 3rd and 4th bath).

Here are the first three steps:

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STEP 1: take 3600ml distilled H2O and add 400 ml vinegar making the PH approx 4, put the 1kg of bark in an appropriate sized pot (pot A)and add the vinegar and water solution. boil for an hour and 45 mins (don't be afraid to boil rigorously, also make sure there is a lid on the pot)

STEP 2: pour the bark and water threw a strainer and transfer the liquid to another pot(pot B). add another fresh 3600 ml water and 400ml vinegar into the first pot (pot A) and boil the bark again for another hour and 45 minutes. while you are doing this boil pot B without a lid to reduce the volume

STEP 3: repeat step 2 two more times you want to do a total of 4 acid boils.

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Step 3 is where I'm just a little confused. I believe it may be trying to say to swap the liquid from pot B into pot A for the 3rd and 4th acid boil. Although, if you follow it straight to the text, then it would imply putting fresh water and vinegar in for the 3rd and 4th boil -- which just seems like way too much overall solution to work with in the end then. Before boiling down, that would be a total of 1,6000ml's to work with. Even though it's possible to reduce this volume, it just seems like it would be a waste of time and just cause much dilution.

Any comment or anyone more familiar with these A/B teks who can help would be fantastic!
Thanks guys!

That is a lot of water to boil down yes...maybe overkill imo.
It Does mean 4 acid boils BUT you can have two pots going...One doing the boils and one reducing the filtered acetate water...that way by the end of the last boil you will only have a smaller amount to finish off.
Don't forget that although the starting amount is high...by the time an hour is up...most will have boiled away so the end amount won't be that high.

Keep an eye on them at all times though and don't wander off...many people have done this and burned the pan dry.

Also 1kg is a large amount...you maybe better off doing a small 50g extracting to get your feet wet...If it goes sideways, then you won't have lost it all.

Thanks so much for clearing that up cyb! I assumed it meant 4 completely new acid boils, just it seems like an insane amount to me. And yeah, since I've never followed an A/B tek before maybe it is better for me to just start small and try it out. That way I don't risk wasting all the ACRB.

Since this tek was written for 1kg, I may look into another tek written for smaller amounts rather than just cutting the amounts for this tek so extremely.

Try to the first one in my signature...designed for new extractors

Awesome! It looks a lot simpler and more designed for a smaller amount. Great tek, with absolutely perfect understandable steps (love the pics!). This would be a great way for me to test out how ACRB works before trying to extract all of it at once.

I like how you include salt right off the bat as well, most ACRB extractions list salt as a 'used if preferred' option - while most prefer to get as much out of their plant material as possible, so you mine as well just make the salt step a needed part.

But how exactly do you feel this compares to using 50 grams of ACRB? Would you suspect the same amount of product as shown with MHRB? Or slightly less? Additionally, if using ACRB should all the rest of the measurements be exactly the same amount as you used with MH? Or do you think for best results with ACRB that it should be tweaked a little.

Also last concerns here, you have in step 5 the bottle (with the lye in it) directly in the pan in a double boiler-like fashion. Wouldn't this be of some concern with the amount of heat and pressure being created inside the bottle? I feel the heated glass bottle being so close to the heat source (even with the water as a barrier) could be a risk. And other last concern is that you have the glass pans upside down to dry so all the water/naphtha is out - but in my past experiences when I used MHRB, I normally would end up with more of a gooey residue than crystals - if this method left me another gooey residue as well, wouldn't the goo start to drip from the bottom of the dishes during this drying process as well?

Thanks again for the help, definitely going to look into finding just an empty liter glass bottle for this tek (right now I only have an empty gallon glass jar from my previous extracts).