Sorry if this is a silly question, but I can't for the life of me figure this one out. I have acrb, and all the materials for q21q21's fluffy tek, plus some sodium carbonate. Basically I've avoided lye thus far and would like to continue to do so, but confusa bark seems to require backsalting. So can it be done without lye?

I thought the same thing recently, and tried it on 100 gr. of Acacia Confusa trunk bark. I have explained the problem I got in this thread:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=72333

basically, you cannot rise the ph enough to avoid awful emulsions when using sodium carbonate. They were like dark foam floating on the liquid... I even was thinking about flushing all the shit and start again from scratch.
My belief is that these emulsions are caused by the high content of fats (or some kind of soapy stuff) in the acacias, plus a low ph that doesn't help to break them. Adding some lye fixed the problem and then I could pull the goodies with limonene. Happy end, after all

Thanks for the tip re: sodium carb. I'm starting to think I'm just gonna have to grab some lye. It's a real bummer I can't find any info on a worthy substitute. I've mainly been avoiding it due to a straight-up lack of confidence, plus it's icky . Lime is much less icky...
But I guess since it's only going to be used for backsalting I can compromise