Someone just attempted his first STB Tek and there are no crystals formed in his naptha after a night of freezing... can anyone tell him what the problem is or what he can do

Well Mr. HashMoney, go evaporate half of the naptha and then refreeze. If the jar reveals no neurotransmitters, you need to add more base to your solution and then pull some more. ;]

does naptha just evaporate by sitting out?

Yes, naphtha is volitile, it will evaporate "just sitting out".

A fan will speed things up.

In the future, use less naphtha when you do your pulls. 100-200mL tops for a 500g extraction.



NOTE: we need some new teks that fix a few common problems people are having

The sludge I hear, can be fixed by adding the lye in slowly and making sure there is enough water

The freeze precip problem can be fixed by not using so much naphtha during pulls

alright just evaporated a good deal of the naptha and it's back in freezer, should any crystals have formed during the evaporation?

They shouldn't necessarily have formed, but if some did form, in SWIM's experience that would not be out of the ordinary. He uses a computer fan to evap and has noticed that small crystaline deposits will form from time to time along the side of his evap dish, where the naptha is being blown up the side by the fan. Additionally crystals can form on the bottom depending on how slow the solution evaporates and cools, essentially the longer it takes for these two things to occur (i.e. the longer it takes for the solution become super saturated) the larger your crystal formations will be...i believe.

Starting to get a few crystals out of the freezer but when i take my glass jar out of the freezer massive condensation happens, i try throwing it in the fridge upside down to dry it out then leaving it out upside down after a few minutes in the fridge. All my crystals end up turning back into liquid, it is very aggrivating... any suggestions?

First Suggestion: use an evap dish, Evaporation Dishes are superior to jars IMO because they expose more surface area for faster evap, have a larger area to scrape w/ razorblade more easily and are overall more practical.

Second Suggestion: regardless of evaporation container, when you pull your container from the freezer, pour off the excess naptha so that its just, or mostly the crystals that have freeze precipitated out. Then use a computer fan or other small, high speed fan that won't fill your dish with dust and debris (larger or rotating style fans tend to be quite good at blowing detritus onto your drying crystal, leaving nasties you don't want to smoke )

In all honesty, unless you have a large excess of naptha or are taking an unusually long time to dry your crystals, they shouldn't melt back into solution. Just decant, dry, and enjoy.

SWIM had the same problem. He was doing a small amount though just to see if anything came out. He used 15g lye, 60g MHRB, 200ml of deionized water and 150ml of naphtha. At one point it looked like crystals were emerging, but they ended up being droplets of water that got in the naphtha and froze in the freezer.

Did SWIM do something wrong?

You should use more lye. Your solution probably wasn't basic enough, the DMT didn't deprotonate and thus didn't migrate in the naphta.

Also if you are going to freeze precipitate, make sure you use light naphtha.

Thanks for the reply, dread. SWIM used Zippo lighter fluid as it is the only thing to be found here, at least in the places SWIM looked. Is there another naphtha that could be recommended that he can find from a paint or hardware store? We don't have charcoal fluid or camping-stove fluid around here. They're just not sold.

Thanks again!

Check the cas number on your naphtha. Then search that cas number on google and if it says "light aliphatic naphtha" then you're good to go.

SWIM checked the CAS #. It said this: Refined Isoparaffin. It didn't mention naphtha at all. Perhaps that is his problem, lol! He also saw that there is a naphtha mix used for degreasing engines. SWIM thinks that is something that can be found here. Anyone have any experience of using a naphtha mix from some other than lighter fluid?