I have just done a STB extraction following Nomans tek. First few pulls, all went well. 3rd pull and I got an emulsion. I added loads of salt and vibrated the mix until the emulsion broke, so all seemed well. However, my 3rd pull yielded almost zero spice. On investigation, I could see loads of what looked like crystals sat on top of the base layer, but not into the solvent layer.

At first I thought these must be mimosa shards or someting, but I tweezered one out and it melts and smells like DMT. My crystals are stuck! They absolutely will not migrate into the solvent with the mix as it is - how can I rectify this? Please help!!

did you separate the solvent and add fresh new warm solvent? That should dissolve it, I cant see why it wouldnt.

In the last case if that doesnt work, can you manually move all of them (and a bit of the base layer) elsewhere, acidify it all, add base again and pull with solvent.

tell us how it went

Thanks endless.
I added solvent that was recovered from the previous pulls, but only at room temp.

I have tried moving a few of the crystals from the big mix jar into a smaller jar, topping up with water, adding a bit more lye and pulling again. The crystals in this smaller jar seem to have disolved, so this could be a fix.

I will try another pull with new, warmed solvent and see if it works.

In that situation I found that the easiest way to deal with it is to get the dirty xtals out of the solution (last time it happened i scooped and strained it - you can use a sieve or tea strainer) and then put into a glass with water. As the fb isn't soluble in water you can simply decant the dirty water and re-x the crystals.

cheers for that!! ^

I have had this happen, but not during an STB, only when I've got jars of mimosa goop solution lying around after pulls waiting for me to perform xylene pulls (still haven't).

THe naptha I used for my 1st extraction was lighter than the heavy naptha I've got so it evaporates a lot quicker, leaving these amazing shards - which are beautiful to smoke once fished out but a bit harsh if not washed - I used to put the crystals on paper, then wipe the brown off gently with my fingers - used to work mostly, but using common sense like that ^ evaded me.

Will retreive the rest and wash in water before re-X'ing if needs be (they're so beautiful as they are though - really long).

For refernce to anyone who may have the same problem in future - I simply warmed my naptha in a hot water bath until it was hot, and poured it on immediately. This seemed to dissolve those crystals that were floating on the basic layer.