First off, Hi! 1st post. I'm a noob at this and would like to thank everyone for all the awesome info! But... there's a little problem.
I'm using Lazyman's tek. So, after De-fating with Naphta and separating, I took 50% membrane grade pure NaOH and diluted it 20-1 with distilled water to aprox 5% NaOH still giving me a ph of aprox 13.5. (at 3% i measured a ph of 13.3 so i think this is fine) I added aprox 200ml to 30g of powdered bark. After bout 5min of mixing i added 50ml Naphtha (Ronsonol lighter fluid)and mixed for 30min using a magnestir. I make sure not to create bubbles. Then i turned off the stirrer and let sit. And sit. And sit. The Naphtha wasn't separating to the top. I thought maybe the Naphtha had evaporated some (flask was uncovered) so i added 50ml more, mixed, and let set over night covered. Now i see some separation but it's in like 3 parts. The top is clearer but still really milky white. Second is like dark chocolate milk. And the bottom is black. Huh? Ya think my PH is off? Should i just let it sit longer? Any suggestion? Once again, thanx for your patience and info.

Most of the time this can be solved by just adding more lye. You cannot really hurt DMT by adding more lye so don't hold back.

Also adding salt helps but I'm not sure about the amount of salt you can add.

Hay, thanx for the quick reply. So, ya think my ph is off? I gota get a meter. I'm don't have any lie. My source is 50% grade pure NaOH diluted down to 5%. Could add more 50% to the mix. I'm gona leave it till the morning and see what happens. If nothing, i'll add more 50%.

Ok. Weird. I took a sample of my 5% NaOH to work to use their ph meters and got a reading of 13.3. This puzzles me cause the 3% that we have here reads 13.4. I must have screwed up in my math when i diluted it from the 50% NaOH source. I'm gona do a quick test when i get home.

K. When i got home, the mix still hadn't separated enough. I added 20ml more 50% NaOH and mixed. Still no immediate separation. I'll check back in bout 6 hours. Grrr...

Middlelayer is an emulsion of your lye solution and your naphtha. To break this you can do one of several things, or combine them freely:
1) Add more lye. A higher concentration of NaOH and a higher pH will break some nasty bubbles.
2) Add tablesalt (a couple of grams). NaCl is quite effective at preventing the formation of emulsions.
3) Give your solution some heat. A warm solution is a quickly separating solution.
4) Stir. Swirl. Try to make your solution go around and around without making your naphthalayer mix with your emulsion.
5) Pull up your emulsion, squirt it down into your solution. Repeat.
6) Tap. Give that bottle some nice taps (be careful if glass) at the bottom.

Its been 8 hours since i raised the ph of my mix and there is no separation at all. This mix might be shot. So... Since this is my first attempt, i'd like to learn what i possibly did wrong.

The 50% High Purity Membrane Grade NaOH i'm using is exactly the same as this
http://www.jostek.com.au...Sodium_Hydroxide_50.pdf
with the exception of who the supplier is. Not from this company.
Due to it's strength, I'm diluting it 1-10 with demineralised water.

The Naphtha is Ronsonol lighter fluid.

The mixer is the Magnestir 2 from Labcraft.

And the source is powdered Mimosa hostilis. Used 30g.

I de-fated by adding the Naphtha to the dried powder, mixed, and drew it off.
Then i added aprox 200ml NaOH, mixed for bout 5 min. Then added aprox 50ml naphtha, mixed for 30 min, and let set for 2 hours. After seeing just about no separation, I added 50ml more naphtha. Mixed. Let sit over night. Not much changed so i raised the ph by adding 50%NaOH directly while mixing. Let set for bout 8 hours and here i am. Any oviouse clues to what i screwed up on?
Now when adding the naphta to the mix, i mixed it right in really well. Didn't introduce any air bubbles but it was thoroughly mixed. Is this wrong?
Haven't tried adding heat or salt yet. Not sure which would be the best action to take.
Thanx again for the ideas.

i would say you need more liquid 30g with 200ml liquid isnt enough in my opinion...SWIM usuually uses 15ml per gram....sometimes more...so 30 x 15 is 450ml

Under closer examination, I think that the powdered bark is staying in suspension in the Naphtha. Hmmm...

K. I just tried the exact same procedure using fine ground flower to see where i went wrong. The Naphtha stayed on top pretty well till i "shook the shit out of it". Just like my real mix, now it doesn't want to separate. Theres no air caught in the mix but it seems the flower is in suspension with the Naphtha. I'm thinking that might be my problem. So... I'm i not supposed to thoroughly mix the Naphtha in? Should i just let it sit on top from the very beginning? One would think that it would have very limited abortion that way.

third layer might be your fat and oils, I've seen some questions about this and wanted to mention that your are removing them from your alkaloids so there is a third layer but that's what is in it, cholesterol, happy worm holing

It is usually not wise to "shake the shit out of it" as emulsions can easily form. Mainly i think your naphtha isn't separating because it is stuck in your base mix from being too thick. As jorkest said... add more water. 6% is way too low and usually causes problems. Good luck!

K. Now i'm up to bout 550ml of NaOH and bout 150ml Naphtha. We'll see what happens.

im lost

Its working! Its working! I love you guys!!! I'll keep you all posted on how the rest of it goes.

Good stuff!

K. 1st pull of Naphtha done. Its perfectly clear but with a slight yellow tint. Not piss yellow but not bad. I think this is due to heating the mix to 50c as recommended from a friend. Going to try letting it separate without heating it this time and see what happens. Is this slight yellow a bad thing?

No it's not necessarily "bad". Yellow naphtha indicates it pulled something else than DMT (which is clear) from the MHRB-solution. This is not something you generally want, but since it pulled something else it probably pulled DMT too. It simply tells you it pulled "something"!

Cloudy naphtha on the other hand is a very good sign, since this indicates that it pulled so much DMT that the solution got saturated and DMT started precipitating out (temperature drop). If you plan on evaporating the naphtha down, this is something you should look for. Whenever it gets cloudy, stop evaporating and start precipitating!

Heating naphtha before pulling will increase it's ability to hold DMT as well as it's ability to hold other stuff (oils and fats which turns it yellow). This is something one should do if one want to get room for more DMT. But beware that it will start to precipitate out as the solution cools if you got enough of it, so be quick with the freezer!

Dear god I hate STB's. It's the same problem over and over. Naphtha goes bye-bye in the sludge. There's at least 1 of these a day, and so far no real way to prevent it.

They are more problems then they are worth imho. Many people seem to have great success with STB, but give me a good old A/B and I'm a happy extractor.

Sorry, not really relavent, but wanted to throw my 2¢ in.

Don't be sorry. A 2cent opinion may be some priceless information. Would you say that a A/B may be better at keeping the Naphtha more clear?