How long would you have to boil root bark in order to extract all the alkaloids? Would it benefit the extraction to acidify the root bark while it's boiling with vinegar?

I have been thinking about boiling the bark in water acidified by vinegar then straining the bark out so I just have a liquid with the actives. Then I could add lime to covert to freebase and do pulls on the liquid in a jar.

Would this method work? If not then why? I feel like it would reduce solvent loss and make things cleaner. Only downside is a long boil.

Yes, you can use vinegar to acidify the solution. I usually use about 1/4 vinegar to the amount of water used. Marsofold's tek located in the wiki explains the process quite well. That's the tek i tend to use and it never fails... even without a crockpot.

Lime is usually used in Dryteks . If you add too much water, it can create a goopey mess if i'm not mistaken. Maybe if you reduced the liquid enough and add enough lime, you might get it to the right consistency to pull the alks, but i really don't know.

If this is your first extraction i'd stick to one of the teks in the wiki. After you get the process down, then start experimenting with new techniques. Just my .2

Good luck buddy!

This will be my fourth extract. The first three were very successful using q21q21's tek 2 that you are referring to. So your saying that lime is not good to basify a liquid extract. Ok that makes since and if I use lye then I will basically be doing a Marsofold tek lol. I was just hoping to do a extract without lye, but use this liquid-only way to keep it clean. I like the simplicity of the q21q2 tek but I want to do a bigger extract with no problems, so dealing with just the liquid makes sense to me.

I wouldn't worry too much about using lye. It isn't soluble in naphtha and so won't be carried over into your end product. Even if a little bit does get pulled with your naphtha, you can all ways clean it up with either sodium carbonate or just recrystallize afterwards.

Thanks for your help clearing that up. I bought some Rooto lye today at ace hardware. Ill be using the tek you do soon, just need to find some time!