It would appear i'm the second person to have this issue that has talked about it on this forum.

If you are using a tek that requires sodium carbonate at any point, make sure you buy the pure stuff online, or convert the baking soda by heating it in the oven LINK.

I made the mistake of using soda crystals bought from the supermarket, and most likely it will apply to other branded washing soda concoctions you may find. It meant getting absolutely nothing out of 150g of root bark (not in one go, it took me that much to realise what the problem was.) The soda crystals turned out having only 30% sodium carbonate decahydrate in there with no mention of the other additives, so its possible other brands wont even tell you the percentage.

I'm guessing most people are more careful to make such an error but i thought it worth mentioning since it could cost you a good amount of dmt.

The A&H MSDS says the sodium carbonate is 85% pure, with the rest being water. It does absorb water over time, creating multiple hydrate versions, not converting back to bicarbonate, but it can hold as much as 3 times its weight in water. So with the A&H, which I have used out the box without problems, it might still be a good idea to bake it if concerned about quantities. I have mostly used it for conversions, so I generally use extra anyway.

i tried using dri-pak/DP soda crystals in a green packet for the conversion of fumarates, there is a thread where someone else reported failure using this brand

All my other extractions that didn't use sodium carbonate have gone perfectly, i even checked the ph when using the soda crystals, so theres no way it was down to not using enough.

I will be trying out similar teks again on a small scale with some converted baking soda so i can be sure of the content.

thought baking soda was sodium bicarbonate? and yes it has to be stored quite well and the store kind has no intent for that so yeah

SWIM never had a problem with the good ole A&H washing soda, but he did switch to their baking soda (prepping a bit by cooking off the CO2) because he had plenty of household uses for it.

I don't think A&H is available outside of America.

For the people in the uk at least, the baking soda option appears to be the best bet.

Just attempting to freebase some fumarate that i precipitated from an acetone wash of my inspirator.

It would appear you can skip the the hour long oven conversion of baking soda. I put some in a mug, stuck it in the microwave for about 6 minutes, resulted in sodium carbonate in a fraction of the time. This time will vary though depending on how much you try to convert at once.

It is a lot more soluble than the dri-pak/DP soda crystals which leave a lot of powdery stuff at the bottom of the container and takes an age to drop clear, no idea what rubbish they mix in with it.

I think i may have worked out my problem with sodium carbonate, it may have not been a problem with the brand i was using. Reading a bit more about it, it would appear there is a bit of a loss when converting to freebase using this method.

It would seem most people will get their dmt furmarate crystalised and cleaned up somewhat before hand and perform the conversion in a relatively small amount of liquid.

Instead i attempted to freebase a dmt containing FASW solution and used a much more carbonate solution than most others, it still doesn't make any sense to me why i ended up with nothing, but it could be that using a much larger amount of solution increases the loss.

Either way, i've decided using sodium carbonate just isn't worth it for me.

Going to stick to naphtha and try using acetone and water for a cleaner freebase.

What conversion did you do? The water conversion (dissolving fumarates in water and adding sodium carb)? You can also do another conversion which is more sure to work (But results in slightly impurer product), which is instead of doing the water crystallization, just dry-mixing the sodium carb and fumaric acid, then adding just enough water to make paste, letting it dry and pulling with acetone or IPA or ethanol, and evapping that. This will yield you a freebase product for sure.

But if you did the water conversion, did it at least get cloudy when you added the sodium carb?

Yes it did, but nothing after a week in the fridge.

Just recently i got myself a nice looking crystal of furmarate from FASA after washing the residue from my smoking device, dissolved it in a minimal amount water, topped up with sodium carbonate water (made from baking soda), after a week, nothing.

Even if waiting longer would have worked (i didn't throw it away after the week), something that requires me to wait that long seems more hassle than its worth.

I didn't attempt to pull it though since i had no solvent left and it was a minimal amount anyway.

From now on, if i want furmarate, thats what i'll make. If i want freebase than i'll just go with a naphtha tek.

Dissolve freebase in acetone, add water until it precipitates leaving me with freebase free of any trapped naphtha.

"PH up" from some pool supply stores are 100% sodium carbonate, they also carry it in hardware stores near the outdoor section for garden ponds and such.

Never even heard of a pool places like that, and none of the major chains sell anything like that in the UK.

Even after making the sodium carbonate though i still had issues, i think this method only really works when working with reasonable amounts of product.

This is what you need

I don't doubt the sodium carbonate i made from the baking soda though, it seems to be a proven method.

Plus just searching for sodium carbonate on ebay will provide cheaper sources than that. I'm not having issues finding it online, just had bad results from the supermarket stuff that appears (when doing it the way i did) to have not been a fault of the product itself.

On my last attempt (using a small amount of dmt with converted baking soda) i even added some sodium hydroxide just in case it was needing a higher ph, still nothing, i think its all about the quantities of liquid and dmt you are working with.

No one seems know what causes the higher than expected product loss during the successful conversions to free base, i think its likely using an excess of sodium carbonate water will increase the losses.

That's unless someone can confirm they have added the required amount of sodium carbonate water (a lot) to dmt containing FASW and had good yields.