Your amount of water may create problems. The vinegar is totally unnecessary the way you employ it. The xylene is trick if you do not know what to do with it afterwards as you cannot freeze precipitate it, and it will literally stink your place if you don't like the smell (chances are, you won't)

Since you're a novice and you got absolutely no clue as to what you're doing and why, why don't you stick to a tried and tested tek (like noman's, q21q21's, vovins etc) instead of stitching together ideas and concepts from different teks? Let these wild experimentations for when you got a few successful extractions under your belt!

So it's better not to use vinegar here at all, why? And what comes to xylene pulling, I will salt it out with FASA.

here you go

question regarding Noman's tek and doing a sodium carbonate wash. What it seems to say is that you take your naphtha solution, freeze precipitate it, clean it all out etc, then re dissolve it in naphtha, add the wash, let it separate and take out the naphtha layer.

So i was wondering, can't you just take your original naphtha solution and before you freeze it add the wash, then separate it? wouldn't that work? like adding a cleaning stage in between the original separation and the freezing, so doing two separations rather than one. It seems to make more sense in my head than freezing it and cleaning it out then redissolving it in the solution you've just cleaned it from.

SJ, you can definitely do it, its recommended, in fact... Wash before the initial freeze.

Donald, the vinegar is considered unnecessary because you are basically doing like an STB afterwards, adding a base without filtering the solids... The vinegar would be useful if you were doing an A/B, so you would do 4x boils and filter the solids away. Since you are not filtering, its hard to see a sense in it... Some teks like panoramix or BLAB have first been written to include that vinegar soak, but nobody did a side-by-side, AFAIK, to show that the vinegar soak helps in anything. Maaaybe if you had shredded bark instead of powdered, and if you left it for days, it would help breaking a but further the bark and increasing yields, but thats just a hypothesis and it might not be true. It wont hurt if you do that, though, the only thing is you'll be "wasting" a bit of vinegar (and some NaOH to neutralize it before it becomes basic), but if thats not a problem to you, go ahead!

thanks endlessness, good to know, it certainly makes more sense in my head to do it before the initial freeze rather than freeze it, clean it (naphtha), re dissolve it in stuff you've just cleaned from and then clean with carbonate.

but certainly makes sense to do it in between the first separation and the freeze, seeing as the first solution is lye+water anyway and this is just carbonate+water, so i couldn't see any problems with doing it, in regards to loss of yield etc.

So really i'll have one jar for the lye part, put the naphta in and then separate into jar 2, make jar 2 the cleaning phase with carbonate, then separate again into a 3rd jar that goes in the freezer. Seems to be very simple and make real sense, because what goes in the freezer should be really clean.

I did use a small pipette to take the naphtha out 0.5ml at a time which was slow but for all my pulls i took less than 0.1ml of gunge with me, so i was happy, i had a good clean product in the freezer.

BIG bonus is that i was thinking 1/2 a gram would get me 2 doses, but in my mind i forgot that a dose was 25mg and not 250mg lol so now im really happy as i've gone from 2 doses to 15+ lol.

You can buy pure sodium bicarbonate in any grocery store, supermarket or pharmacy, its used for cooking, as anti-acid for the stomach, etc.. You can transform sodium bicarbonate into carbonate by heating it in the stovetop for some minutes or in the oven for an hour. Just weigh before and after, it loses a third of the weight. Careful because it will be REALLY hot, let it cool down before touching it etc.

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.m...te_into_Sodium_Carbonate

Funny enough (and I don't think this is mentioned very often) you do not need sodium carbonate if you have lye at hand. Sodium carbonate is used to make the water basic enough to keep dmt in the non-polar pull, something that lye can do more than easily.

Dissolving 3-4 grams of sodium hydroxide per litre of water will do the same job as sodium carbonate and will give you a pH basic enough to wash your non-polar solvent. But if you're dying to get sodium carbonate (for whatever reason) then get baking of (aka sodium bicarbonate) (NOT baking powder) and cook it in the oven @200 C for 1 hour or so - baking soda will lose ~30% of its weight and at the same time will convert to sodium carbonate.

the whole point of sodium carbonate though is to clean the naptha of any rubbish that you might have taken out from the lye/naptha stage. So, to me, the lye and sodium are doing different jobs, the lye is for breaking down the plant and releasing the dmt and the sodium is for cleaning your naphtha solution

today will b my first ever hit dont know if im excited or nervous lol

No, they're doing the same job - lye also "cleans" your naphtha solution (whatever that means) the very same way sodium carbonate does. The idea is that: you wash the naphtha with water to take away everything that is water soluble - might be traces of n-oxide, traces of lye solution and whatnot, since your freebase dmt is water-insoluble. And you want this water to be basic enough (this is where any good base will do, be it potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, ammonia etc) to make the water basic enough to keep dmt freebased and into the naphtha. You could do a just-water clean up but the ~7 pH of water would take away a great portion of dmt.

Also, good luck with your first hit!

ok thanks for that, i get what you're saying,i did use a really small pipette and i ended up with trace amounts of gunk in the jar so i guess im ok

as for the hit it was a total fail, must be on my part. Never used a vaporiser before and this is just a cheap one so it probably didn't heat enough or whatever, i dunno, i kept my thumb over it to let it build up and it did tickle my throat but absolutely no effect, not even a slight one, so really disappointing, all i want to do is experience something different or unusual having never tripped before

i think i might just buy a pipe and smoke it old fashioned way

No.

When you pull with naphtha from the basic mhrb soup (or whatever your plant source is) extra stuff can enter in the naphtha due to sloppy techniques or even due to the fact that some plant compounds are amphoteric (soluble in both water and solvents - such as soap) and so on. In other words your naphtha pull gets everything from the plant that can be dissolved in it, including of course dmt. The basic water wash serves to remove unwanted plant substances that got in the naphtha but you do not really want them; this can be small amounts of lye, maybe even specs of the basic solution and off course substances that are amphoteric.

Think of this example - let's say that your plant has some amount of dmt-n-oxide. This is soluble in both solvents (but less so in naphtha) and water. You get your NP pull, it has dmt and dmt-n-oxide; you wash it with basic water and by doing that you remove dmt-n-oxide. The dmt you'll get now will be purer, since you got rid of the dmt-n-oxide by washing.

In real life, replace "dmt-n-oxide" with whatever may be contaminating in a similar fashion and there you have it! Mind you, many people get very clean, pure dmt without eve, bothering with the wash-this can do with 1-2 extra recrystallisations. There are many ways to skin a cat.

Also just to clarify a bit more what inf meant.. When he mentions using lye as a washing solvent, it seems counter productive but its not really.. When you are extracting, you have a very concentrated lye solution with your mimosa. If small specs of that come across (which may be visible or so small you dont see), you're gonna get, appart from the plant impurities and so on, some of that lye. And since it was very concentrated, the lye ammount can be significant.

Now when you wash, you are not anymore using a concentrated lye solution, you would be using a very dilute lye solution for the wash, you'll need very little lye to raise the pH to 10-11. This will redissolve any of those polar plant impurities and extra lye that came across.. And since its a very dilute solution, you shouldnt really have a problem with significant lye amounts contaminating your final product, because you'll anyways remove all of the wash water, and even if very small unnoticed specs remain, they should be insignificant in terms of lye content.

Thats the theory..

That being said, its all up to you, what base you use for washing, if you understand the process and take care that its slightly basic water. Whatever you feel more comfortable with, go for it.

I have a quick cactus extraction question:

I am doing a STB cactus extraction and have added my lye/water solution to my cactus powder and have just added the xylene as well. My next step will be adding the hcl to the pulled xylene but i need some help on how much to use. I have some 10% hcl from a lab that i will be using, and from the teks i have read somewhere between 3-6 drops of 33% muriatic acid is usually used in this step. What would be a good starting point? 5 drops? The main goal is to lower to a neutral ph if i'm not mistaken, however i don't have a ph meter at the moment.

Also, i am curious as to how much water solution i should use in this extraction? I found this link here that asked the same question but there weren't any difinitive answers (I am also doing the ekstaza tek, using 200 grams of san pedro powder). When i don't add enough, the solution is too thick and chunky but when i add alot more water i'm afraid all the mescaline will be sitting in the water and the xylene won't pick up much. Thanks for the help

Hello there,

Swim's in the midst of a first extraction, via vovins tek. After freezing 48hrs for the first yield, there were noticeable amounts of very white crystals on the bottom. Broke them loose, filtered, crystals melted into the filter paper. The filter paper feels rather.. starch; so Swim is wondering the best means of acquiring this back from the filter paper, if this is indeed where any lies; if this is even possible/plausible. Swim will be undergoing the 'pour off naptha, re-freeze upside down, fridge upside down' method for the rest, in case.

In addition, Swims ph meter was unable to fit in the sepratory funnel, and thus made ph testing a tad more tumultuous. Now checking the basified extracts (as Swim has saved every liquid from the process) he is getting a reading of around 10-11ph on all containers. Though Swim was seeming to get readings of 12 when draining some from the sep funnel to test. Could more lye solution be added to these extractions to raise the ph to 12-13 to try and acquire more spice? Could the naphtha Swim is freeze precipitating be used after further basification, even if it has the potential to be holding small amounts of spice, as is?

~ Xtramint

xtramint, just soak the filter in warm naphtha to retrieve your DMT again. Check the FAQ on freeze precipitation tips.

As for pH meter, thats entirely unnecessary, basify till its all black and add a bit more just for good measure, that should already be pH 13-14. I definitely recommend at least 13 if you are pulling with naphtha, so yeah, add more lye.

5th dimensional, 20 milligrams is indeed 0.02g

Yeah this can happen sometimes, maybe if you've been opening the freezer to check too often and the vibrations prevent it from sticking, or due to the crystallization for some reason a bit of air got trapped inside of it and it becomes too light, or its not cold enough, or depending on the shape/micro-texture of the freezing container it doesnt attach well, etc.. Crystallization is at the same time a mistery, a science, and an art. I love it

Nothing to worry. The faster you filter and the coldest it is, the less chance of crystals melting into the filter. Again not to worry, if it melts, just use a bit of warm naphtha to pick up again and freeze again. If nothing has been thrown away, nothing is lost.

Edit: oh yeah of course forgot what the next poster said, it may also have to do with saturation, if you evap some more and freeze again it can help it sticking.

For naphtha freeze precips. evapping the naphtha to the most dmt condensed solution you can will help it bond and stick as well, shouldnt be tooo much space for crystals to float around in, if it still doesnt work add it to another pull and evap them both down a lot before next freeze attempt.

Michael's art supply store has heptane. It is a tin jar can named Bestine and it is pure heptane.

1) Still in the midst of a first extraction and Swim has a Q. Swim has been evapping for some time now. The naphtha would appear to have all evaporated, though there's this ever so slight oily film that really seems to not want to dry, fan for +24hrs and all. In some areas where this film is more concentrated, it has a very slight yellow tinge to it, though this is only in isolated areas. This is keeping Swim from reaching any sort of scrapping stage, regardless of time restraints he may be facing.

2) Also, Swim has unfortunately been unable to yet extract the spice from the filter paper, mentioned at the top of this page. Swim has soaked it in warm naphtha in more than one manner, and the spice stays in the filter paper, which dries to be, yet again, rather starchy.

3) Thanks,

4) ~ Xtramint.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but ideally, one freeze-precipitates the goodies out of naptha. You can partially evaporate it to make the solution more saturated with DMT so that it precipitates more easily, but every time I've tried complete evaporation of naptha, I've wound up with an orange goo that is made up of plant oils and DMT. I usually use heptane to clean that goo up and just use it on changa.