Yeah, I evaporated it in an oven in two days set at 60 C, the real temperature was between 50 and 80 C at all times.

Ive never gotten around to using my oven to evap my vinegar, ive only used a desk fan to evap. The first 2 vinegar pulls evap in less than 18hrs this way. Im left with a nice brown waxy acetate. Followed the tek to the T.

A question for the cacti dudes, does the evap temp make a difference to end result? or is it the temp at which the mesc is pulled by the limo?

I believe evap temp does make a difference in the end result, at least with mesc HCl salts. I'm not very familiar with acetates, but with HCl salts a higher temp evaporation (170F/77C) always resulted in a darker end product. Evapping over a reptile heat mat in a pyrex pie plate gives much brighter, whiter crystals with beautiful clear fan-like patterns. I always attributed the color difference to some non-mesc stuff getting charred in the oven but I have no scientific evidence to back that assertion. Again, this is with HCl, not acetate, so there may mat be a direct parallel.

I've never really noticed a difference in end product (after a few washes with acetone and IPA) between hot solvent pulls and cold ones. Except that the colder pulls don't seem to grab as much good stuff so more pulls are necessary.

In terms of potency between higher heat evap and lower, I've never noticed a difference but 69ron swears that higher temps (or at least evapping above a certain temp) produce a less active product. I've always heard that mesc HCl is very stable, even at pretty high temps so I'm not sure who's right. Of course it could be that higher heat destroys some of the non-mesc alkaloids and/or active impurities. If that's the case, then I could see how a heated product might provide for a less intense experience. The mescaline content might be the same, but it now lacks some of the 'other stuff' that augments or potentiates the effects. Again, this is with HCl.

I wonder if the same thing can happen to mesc acetate as seems to happen with DMT acetate when heated. From what I've heard the DMT acetate seems to break down into acetic acid and DMT free base when heated, so DMT acetate can be vaporized with decent effects. Maybe the same thing happens to mesc acetate when heated and the acetic acid breaks away from the mesc free base. If that's the case then perhaps you ARE losing mescaline in the oven, as I assume that the free base is less stable under high temps than the salt. Just a guess. Anyone else have an opinion on this? Can any chemistry gurus chime in?

All the above is based on speculation and simple observations with HCl salts produced from limonene pulls, so please don't apply what I've mentioned directly to acetates without thinking it over first. YMMV, but I hope the info helps. I'd love to hear others' experiences with different temperatures, solvents, acids, etc.

-JM

so i've been reading up on M extraction, and I think that gassing is the easiest way to a clean product. Is it possible to reuse the xylene after gassing tho?

Yeah. Your results may be a little dirty though after a few re-uses as the amount of plant oils become more and more.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!! I've been doing really good with my mesc xtraction up until tonight. I left some water in a glass dish on the stove top and got distracted and left it on too long. Now like half of it is nasty burnt brown. What can I do? Is it screwed? Need help

it's happened to some people..it seems to remain still active if it's not burnet at too high temps..you aybe oxidized a bit at mm 95-96°c so it would be still active in swim opinion

Thanx dimitrix. there was still some water on the other side of the pan; don't know if that matters when the other half is scorched. I went ahead and did phlux's cleanup on it and its still slightly brown, a kind of red or orangish brown, so I may do it once more but that seemed to work.

SWIM has a San Pedro extraction going on, following 69ron's tek. She followed it to the letter, so only allowed the CaOH to sit with the cactus powder for about 30-minutes or so. Since then she's read that many people let it base for a day or more before adding the solvent. Since she's pulling over a number of days, the mixture will continue to freebase over the entire period, right?

Thank you.

from my reading i suggest that once the alks are being bassified work quickly to complete your pulls, its unlike the BLAB and wont work that way because 1 blab uses vinegar soak and 2 the mhrb is wood powder that dosent break down as much as cactus flesh. the flesh will IMMEDIATELY push out the alkaloids and will BEGIN to yield less and less product vs trash yet to be washed.

so no, work fast, however youre not using lye so this may not apply

paz y luz

i have not found this to be the case at all

Here are SWIM's first and second pulls. The first one is the dirty one. Not sure why there is such a huge difference because he titrated both of them to PH 7. There was one difference in the salting procedure. For the first one, I added sulfuric acid water, mixed, then separated. I checked the PH, and it was still basic so I added more acid directly to the water before adding it back to the NP. That I believe was my mistake. The second one after checking the PH I added the water back to the NP, and THEN added the acid, mixed and separated again. It's possible I didn't carry out the titration as precisely as I had thought, but I think that difference in procedure is the reason. Makes sense to me, and in hindsight I don't know why I did it the way I did it for the first salting.

sweet work

Thanks! I know it looks pretty and everything, but SWIM must have screwed up somewhere because his yield is very poor. So far after 3 pulls from 450 grams, he has collected only 1120 mg. Maybe he needs to shake it more when pulling. His cactus powder might suck as well who knows.

Anyhow, it is still a proud moment for SWIM to have finally had a somewhat successful mescaline extraction! Wooo!!

Edit: Some notes about the extraction. Maybe someone can chime in about the yield and why it is not so great.

1. 450 grams San Pedro based with 2250 ml 30%KOH solution (Grow More PH up found at the hydro store down the street)
2. Plan was to add the limo that was to come in the mail that day but UPS broke it so the mixture was left sitting for a week before his limo got there.
3. A few days in he added an undetermined amount of KOH solution to the mixture because it was looking very thick. Not a lot just enough to thin it out a bit.
4. Day 7 his limo came back from the dead! He proceeded as normal, and added a generous amount of limo and shook it pretty good. He saw very easy separations. He did not wait 24 hours to let the layers separate because they were already separated so quickly he did not see why he should wait. The NP layer was clear and not cloudy at all.
5. He salted with sulfuric acid by adding a half cup to the NP and titrating to PH 7. He tried dg's crystalization method but no crystals precipitated for some reason, so he just let it evap. First pull was about 520 mg, second 350mg and third 250mg. He will be pulling until the cows come home because he wants more!!

I guess it is common to get pretty weak cactus when ordering powder from the net, so I think I am going to be blaming the WWW.

Only once was the calciumhydroxide-cactus-water mix left to basify for only 30min. All the other occasions yielded more product than that first time. But ofcourse this does not mean there is or isnt a causal relation between these factors : P

Nowadays it is usually left to basify for a day before non-polar solvent is added. Then one pull a day, usually 4 or 5 pulls. After a few days the cactus mix will start to get pasty. Basifying for a long time seems to break it down to this pasty consistency. Also by this time more oily stuff is pulled. Five days, 4 pulls seems to fit the bill for both eager and patient cats.

The more oily raw extraction products of latest pulls need allot of cleaning. Even IPA washing does not seems to the job right. Cant wash all the tan off. I think this product needs recrystallization. So it was dissolved in water and left to evaporate, yielding a ring of amber colored crystals. Next to this ring there was another ring of clear crystals that looked more like mesc crystals. Judging by the volume of those rings there was still at least 50% other molecules in there. Even after washing with 3xacetone and 3xIPA, up to 30ml last wash!

About 350mg (eyeball) of the crystal mix was bioassayed: not typical of the mescaline trips the cat seems to enjoy. Not psychedelic. The other molecules dumb down the mescaline. As if there was no mesc in there. Dissapointing at least, sedating at most. Did take about 6-8 hours to wear off i remember.

After recrystalisation using water he used a knife to carefully separate the two rings. The clear crystals are very satisfying. Typical off mescaline.

He saved the amber crystals and is now wondering how much goodies are still trapped in there. There isnt a proper heatsource without flame at reach, so recrystalisation using MEK is not considered to be an option now.

Anyways,
how did it go?
Willing to share your cats findings?

I've got these 2 mixes which the D-limo won't separate from.

LEFT - Followed 69ron's tek and couldn't get all the d-limonene out so I thought if I basify it more and add some water the d-limo would come to the top.

RIGHT - Followed heavenlypursuit's tek. The mix is really basified with about 300g of lye and seems to have separated into 3 layers. There is a very thin layer of d-limonene but not enough to take out.

Both have been basified for 4 days and have been settling for 2 days. Both have been shaked really good a couple of times. Why won't the layers sepatate?

^ the one on the right might not settle anytime soon or ever settle completely ime.
slowly and evenly heating the whole mix can help break the emulsion, also, it is possible to slat out from dirty emulsified np, but it is a pita,takes alot of time and hard to explain

be careful to heat the entire glass vessel evenly to avoid shatter if you go that route
(safety splash/catch pan is a good idea if heating questionable glass, in case or breakage)

a recent project went similarly, and the heating, salting, filtering, and recrystallizing was tedious for sure

Why have they not separated properly. Will the one on the left not separate because of the hydrated lime used and because it has powdered cactus material?

I'll try heating them both in a hot water bath.

After a few hot water bath the one on the left never separated so I just dried it out and will use it with another dry 69ron tek. After about 3 hot water baths and a lot of swirling the one on the right separated. Hopefully the next time won't be as hard to separate. Thanks for the help

I watched that Mescaline Extraction Video and it was really, really good until it gets to the part where you add the little bit of acid. The video seems to get lost there.