the msds says 100 % aliphatic hydrocarbon. most light some medium. ime it's absolutely fine

So my friend did some boils on some ACRB recently, however his coffee grinder broke so he ended up splitting the root bark by hand into pieces that were all smaller than a cubic centimeter. He did four 1.5 hour boils on the bark but is wondering if it would be worth shredding the bark and doing additional boils or if the bark should be fairly well exhausted at this point. The water was pH 4 and at a rolling boil most of the time.

Really? I'd read in the DMT Handbook that a high boil won't reduce the yield. I know there's a bit in that guide that I later learned was bogus but I just assumed the salts would be fairly stable at a high temp....

Salts are pretty stable, a bit of a boil is fine, you won't have lost yield.

Might be worth keeping your bark chunks and grinding them when you get a new grinder, I'd rather waste a boil than throw away bark that still had magic in it.

TSF? LWT!

I made a huge mistake just now...

I accidently tried pulling with acetone instead of naphtha - from a solution containing water, dmt, NaOH...

What now? Is this still salvageable?

This won't happen ever again - I have a system that works, but I didn't adhere to it with sufficient diligence - I'm quite confident I've learned my lesson...

PLUR

ps - TSF? = think something's funny?
LWT! = laugh with this! - (Suicidal Tendencies - How will I laugh tomorrow...?)

uh oh. possibly make it acidic again to make them more stable as salts, and so you won't have to boil off a nasty basic solution. then boil off the acetone. rebase and pull w naphtha.

for clarity you are doing a standard acid base, or stb right?

Thanks acacian!

Yes, it's a mini-STB freebase conversion...

Acidify, boil/evap, rebase, pull...got it

PLUR

1. Mix and let separate 4 times (or more if you feel like it)...this may take upto 30mins or more...depends how long it takes for the solvent to rise.
See here

2. 30-50ml per pull is a good guide...depends on how accessible the solvent is (ie how far up the neck of the bottle)...combine all pulls together and reduce in quantity by evap...then continue.

I just tried to extract harmalas from rue with this tek. However I couldn't complete it. After adding sodium carbonate for the first time (step 10) and letting the alkaloids precipitate, I filtered them out, dried them and dissolved the results in vodka.

I'm concerned whether this stuff still contains sodium carbonate? I don't mind if it still contains vasicine etc. Sorry I don't understand chemistry at all, but could someone tell me whether this tincture of mine is safe to use?

dooble. sodium carbonate is safe to ingest in very small amounts. if you still worry about it you can evaporate your vodka. absorb it into distilled water, basify lightly, do a nps pull, evaporate that and reabsorb it into more vodka. be sure to let your nps sit so that all of the basic water settles.

Re-x failure. SWIM took all his extractions, which varied from yellow crystals to brown goo and melted everything in warm naptha, then let it sit for a few hours before putting in the fridge for a few hours, then the freezer overnight. This is the result.



Looks more like white balls then crystals. Also, most of the crystal still appears to be suspended in the naptha. Any suggestions? The tek I followed for re-x, , says after this the naptha should be clear.

Any suggestions?

why is it a failure?

do you know the weight of the Magic before you re-x'ed it? if you have scrapped the tray how much did you get?

if the solvent is still cloudy you might want evap it down so its more concentrated then put it back in the freezer.

Back to the freezer for at least 12 more hours would be my advice.

Those white spots are actually some water that ended up in the solution. They seem to be interfering with chrystallization. Tried getting the water drops out with a pipette but it's rather tricky. Any tips?

Edit: SWIM heated it back up in a bath to re-dissolve the spice, then siphoned the naptha off from the water droplets with a pipette. Round 2.

I happen to have a large amount (2,850ml) of 99.8% Methanol.

I was wondering if when re-xing I could substitute Methanol for IPA or other solvents?

I've done a fair bit of research into the matter (about an hour's worth) and cannot find a "for sure" answer on the matter.

I can not easily obtain 99%IPA so I would prefer to use what I've already got at hand.

this left me quite confused : What I have read is that methanol is Polar? instead of Non-Polar? So the DMT would not be pulled into the methanol? or that instead of pulling only DMT it pulls the impurities you're trying to remove along anyway?

Could someone clear this up for me please?

Thank you in advance.

Hello, travellers

I did 3 extractions using Cyb's hybrid salt tek, as i am newbie and just getting into spice extraction. I have relatively good results from these extractions. I try to follow the tek by the letter. Only thing i deviate is the time involved into the process. As i asked in my previous posts in this thread, i leave the basified mix overnight, and that does seem ok to my humble knowledge so far.

My first extraction yielded pretty white and fluffy crystals, about 0.8 g from 50 g mhrb. My second and third extractions though gave me yellowish and gummy material. I already re-xed the second batch once, have smoked 3 times from it, and the last time i had a really frightening expreince. So i suppose there might be some bad impurities left in there and i will re-x it two more times and will re-x my 3rd batch three times.

I got lab grade chemicals now - acetic acid (which i used since my first extraction), NaOH and NaCl. I don't want to use table salt anymore, cause as it seems all the commercially available salt in my country is iodised. I also got acetone for cleaning the spice and will try to make changa with it.


A thing i want to change is the base i use. Although i got this lab clean NaOH, i prefer using some other base, preferably a foodsafe one. I read on the FAQ section Potassium Hydroxide might be used for basifying, when applying A/B tek . I also see that some people use Lime for that purpose, but suppsedly for Dry teks.

So has anyone used any of those bases in that tek. I'm interested to know if someone has used KOH for basifying in this particular tek or Cyb's MaxIon tek(I think i'm going to try it next times)

I read that KOH is pretty well soluble in water, as where pickling lime is not that soluble. What would you people advise me.

I can still use that NaOH, but prefer to get some food-safe chemical instead.

Blessings All!

KOH and NaOH are prefered but CaOH is used by many of us here. KOH and NaOH are almost identical in strength. CaOH is weaker which is why its used in dry teks, also because it causes weird emulsions due to the calcium making colloidal particles. Look into foodsafe teks if you want food safe chems. I never understood the need for foodsafe chemicals. because if you do an extraction correctly then you wont have any of the chems left over in your final product. Especially if youre vaporizing or pyrolizing your spice, it doesnt matter which base you use.

Thanks for clarification, Du57mi73

Well, i thought KOH could be little less toxic than NaOH, but i don't have much knowledge of chemistry, so i wanted to ask.

I have three things in mind that need to be improved in my extraction process. Find a good glass vessel with a glass cap preferably and a suitable thin-neck shape for nps-pulls. Get a better understanding of appropriate temperatures on the acid/salt/base steps. On my first extraction as soon as naphtha separated on the top the very first time it was transparent as it originally is. On my following extractions, i noticed that naphtha get a yellowish color just as it separated the first time. And as far as i remember, this happened to all the four pulls. I do not heat the solvent, just put room temp it in the basified mix which on the other hand i place in a warm water bath. I also notice that the solvent remains transparently yellowish as soon as i pull and it hits the dish.
Other thing that could have caused might be too big difference in temperature of solvent (coming out slightly warmed in the basified mix) and temperature of the dish (room-temp). I might have also not evaporated it the right way.

I suppose that what i have in my final product is more likely to me some solvent trapped in the spice? It could also be fats from the plant, but that didn't happen the first time, which is what confuses me. The only thing i changed for 2nd and 3rd extractions is the salt. And a little bit more of water to get the mixture level high enough in the bottle so that nps would stay in its thin part. But that was just 50-100 ml more water. Could this have resulted the yellowish final product. If i change the ratio of water per the same ratio of bark/acid/salt/NaOH , could that drastically change the pH, thus letting more plant fats and other alkaloids in final product? Each time i used 30 g NaOH, as Cyb's tek suggests 50 g. I know there are many factors and variables involved but i am just trying to figure it out before doing next extraction.

I used Zippo Lighter Fluid these 3 times. Might be a silly thing to ask but could the age of the solvent have any influence on how it reacts with compounds? I mean, is it possible that if it's older, it would collect more fats and other alkaloids?

I got all lab grade chemicals now, glass pipettes, will get a glass reaction vessel as those used in labs, just to avoid reaction between base and metal cap. Just want to clear things up as much as possible. I have in mind a reaction vessel like this one :




Only thing that worries me is it going to be thin enough for solvent collection with a pipette

That vessel looks perfect.

Its completely natural for your naptha pulls to turn yellow. The longer they sit touching the basic solution, the more oils they will pick up. So if your naptha was mixed several times into the basic solution or if left to sit/let emulsion settle for longer periods of time then that is what could have made it pick up yellowing. The yellowing is plant oils, btw. Another thing is that by adding salt into the solution it is making the water "push" out the oils more. That will also cause more yellowing faster.

But in all actuality, yellowing shouldnt matter that much. If you freeze precip then sufficiently dry out your spice then it doesnt matter how yellow it is, it is all good for the smoking.

yep, i read people here state that yellowing of nps is from plant fats. I keep each pull for an hour (and mix/separate 4 times as suggested in Cyb's hybrid tek). Add the solvent, shake/mix vigorously/ then let it separate completely. My mix stays in a warm water bath, so it takes less than 15 minutes to separate. But just to be sure its completely separated, i start the next shaking 15 minutes after the previous one.

Guess i'll have to experiment a bit with temperatures. Suppose at some points mix gets too warm. Though i am careful not to get it hot. I check it like every two minutes, and if it gets too warm, take it out of water and place it on ground to cool down for a while. I also try to not warm up the water too much.

I did freeze precip on my third extraction and the results were good. I guess ill just stick to 3 X re-xing with that naphtha.

I don't mind spice being yellow, i do not aim to have perfectly white fluffy crystals, but i had an experience with that yellowish spice that really scared the shit out of me, i was doing some strange moves and gestures, and this is why now i settle my extraction approach so cautiously..And will have to involve and get better understanding of quality re-x methods.

Thanks for helping me out! Greatly appreciate it!