Alright, the first time I did an extraction it was with just 30g of bark. I used 5-8 grams of lye, and about 40ml of naphtha, all in a glass pickle jar. I got about 30mg out of it.

Now I have a half lb of mimosa and want to do a better, higher yielding STB.


Some questions:

1) I will use a HDPE gallon jug for the lye/water/mhrb mix this time. How much lye does one ideally use for the 225g of MHRB? The first extraction was done using the guide on http://www.dmt.20m.com/. It talks about the ideal ratio as
200ml water: 5g lye : 20g MHRB.

I have seen some guides, one from a guy who claimed to get almost 2% from half a pound (5g of spice from a half pound of MHRB), that seem to use more lye, in fact this guy used an equal ratio of lye to MHRB.

The MHRB is not pre-powdered, I powder it myself in a powerful blender. What is the advantage/disadvantage of using these much higher ratios of lye:mhrb?

2) The "DMT shuffle" involves shaking the naphtha/lye/bark/water mix thoroughly. I did this with my first extract. However, on this forum many talk simply about rolling the mix around and tilting it upside down and rightside up alternatingly instead of the shuffle. What is the difference and which of these methods is better?

3) I have seen various guides and reports that talk about doing the entire extraction in a HDPE grade plastic gallon jug. Is this suitable or is there the possibility of any complications?

Thanks

Alright, no replies I went ahead with the following tek

225g of MHRB powdered from bark strips
Into a 1 gallon HDPE jug
Added 2.5 liters of water
120 ml of Lye Powder (No weighing scale, it seemed just a little heavier than 100ml of water, so this should be about 150g of lye)

Shook it up nice and good, kept opening the cap to vent the heat/air expansion due to the heat from the lye

Left it overnight.

Today I added 550-600 ml of naptha. Shook it up a little, rolled it around.

Will let sit, and repeat the shaking after 4-5 hours, then once again after 3-4 hours.

Will then leave to sit overnight.

Will extract the naptha and put it in a pyrex dish in the morning. Will evap to about 30% and freeze. Will add 250ml more naptha and let sit for second pull.

Will let freeze precipitate through the day till late at night, maybe even till the next morning.

will then remove, and evap at room temperature and collect crystals.

Will post the results with pics.

Question: To conserve naptha, is there any way to distill the naptha instead of evaporating 70% of it?

To conserve naphtha I do small (100mL) extractions with it, Stick it directly in the freezer, get the crystals out, and pour it right back in the jug. I usually have 3 amounts/jars of 100mL naphtha going at once (ie two in the freezer and one in the extraction jug). If you do it like this there is no need to evap until you are doing your last few pulls.

The amount of lye you add is really a personal thing. Most people use a massive amount of lye. I prefer A/B extractions so my knowledge of the best ratio of lye is limited. But as long as you have the pH high enough you should be fine.

Thanks for the reply.

Another question: After freezing for bout 20 hours, I had a decent amount of crystals in the naphtha. I took the pyrex dish out, and carefully (from what I remember), removed the top layer of the naphtha with a turkey baster and put it back into the jug with some more naptha for another extraction and let the remaining stuff evap...

Theres barely any dmt in the dish now? Did I put the dmt back in the jug? It hasn't evapped fully..maybe it redissolved with all the movement?

Should I just evap all the naphtha next time and use a fresh batch for the next pull?

When you shake it "shuffle" you can form emulsions. This is where you get a foamy layer in between the 2 solvents (water & naptha).

In my first extraction attempt I shook very hard and got such a bad emulsion that the entire thing never seperated into layers again it just become one big foamy shit mix.

This video is an excellent watch:
http://www.youtube.com/v/CyIA8NhMUl4