It sounds to me like your pH meter is malfunctioning. Try using another pH meter.

SWIM tells me he got 510mg from some bridgesii from the first vinegar pull from the first d-limo pull...hes really excited

510 mg from 100 grams of bridgesii in the first pull?

its pH paper.. tested it multiple times. perhaps the d-limonene solution is more acidic than yours? it is 95% pure food grade.

Did you pH check the cactus mix before adding D-limonene? Chances are you are only pH testing the D-Limonene as everything else is held by water which the D-limonene has covered up.

I really wouldn't worry about this. Especially as 95% limonene is very good for this tek.

A friend of mine just did his first pulls last night using this tek.He had a few questions.

What is the vinegar supposed to look like after the pulls and its in the dish? My friends is just clear with with a faint oily look to it.He ate 10gms of his cacti powder last night and is still feeling it so he knows it is good,but the vinegar in the dish just dosnt look like much.

Also,in the tek when it says to let the lemonene and cacti sit for a few hours, exactly how many hours is best.His first soak was only two hours,his second is going on ten hours.

Sorry if none of this makes sense.My friend is still a little mesced up right now. But hes worried he may have wasted 100gms of good cacti.

Hey man,

I wouldn't worry too much, my vinegar was pretty damn clear as well and that doesn't seem to have affected the yield with my first extraction with 100g of cactus.

Also personally I leave each limonene pull to soak overnight before extracting the following day, after reading earlier on the thread that the mesc can take a while to extract. That's just me though, but can't hurt.

I leave for 24 hours minimum. Shorter soaks seem to take longer. Once you have doen one long soak, then future soaks wont need as long as much of the alkaloids will be in excess limonene that was left in the mix after the first seperation.

yup...the second vinegar pull is dry..SWIM just has to scrape it up and weigh it...his second d-limo pull has been soaking for a few days..hes going to work on that one of these days

Could the hydrated lime be substituted with somthing else. I cant find it anywhere.

perhaps a lye solution like they use in the teks that use xylene as the solvent...just substitute d-limo for xylene

would this work 100grams of cactus mixed with 100grams of lye and one liter of water which would make a sludge then add a half liter of water and anothet 50 grams of lye. Then add the limonene.Seperate limonene. Then add vinegar to the limo then evap vinegar.

Lye will not work. It will cause a thick sticky goo to form. This tech needs calcium hydroxide.

So there is nothing I can replace it with?

Not that I know of. Calcium hydroxide is very unique in that it's almost insoluble in water so it makes the cactus mix less sticky. It also forms some insoluble byproducts that would be made soluble if any other base was used.

SWIM tried other bases initially, and all of them made a giant ball of cactus goo that was almost impossible to extract from.

Thanx for the help. I just found some chuna at the Indian store. Will post results.

69Ron,
Allow me to use my first post to thank you for sharing this tek. After choking down snot tea a couple times I was ready to give up on cacti as I wasn't interested in the complicated and nasty chemical extraction teks posted elsewhere. Then I stumbled upon your tek and it seemed too good to be true: a simple tek that uses food-safe, easily obtainable materials that produces high yields? This I gotta try!

After lurking here a couple weeks soaking up every bit of info I could find and gathering materials, I gave it a whirl. Sure enough, the results gave me a very happy weekend! My yield was pretty low, about 500mg from 100g of San Pedro, but I blame that on my inexperience and lousy oil (while waiting for my limonene I bought and used Pure Citrus air freshener instead). But even a 500mg ball of resin is infinitely better than cactus juice!!

Anyway, this is just the beginning of a fun new hobby and I have you to thank for it. I look forward to sharing my experiences and ideas here as I continue my journey....

err better read the ingredients for the pure citrus air freshener before ingestion..

SWIM also had success, yileds were also low, about %0.8, but it was his first try and he did make mistakes. The water that came through with the first limo pull surely casued problems, he will lower the amount to below 300ml next time. He tested a small ball a few days ago and it was a very enjoyable expeerience lasting a good 10 hours then home to bed with no ill after effects.

a few questions for 69ron...

Will a lack of water make a huge difference to the tek? it seems to SWIM that less is better than more, also... SWIM experienced precipitates on the first few HCL pulls, he will try using vinegar next time but he wants to know if SWIY still experiences these precipitates? SWIM read this on another forum from 69ron

"Both of them produced precipitates caused by the calcium hydroxide after salting which needed to be filtered out. After filtering out the calcium junk he separated the 5% hydrochloric acid solution from the two solvents."

So does SWIY still get this? does he just filter each pull or has he refined the process to not have this problem. Will a coffee filter be sufficient to filter these out?

all help is appreciated

More water is NOT good. If it’s wet with droplets of water forming, it’s too much water, lower the amount used. No water should come out of it after it’s mixed. If it feels wet to the touch throughout the mix, it has enough water.



SWIM does not get those precipitates anymore with the current tech. A coffee filter is good enough. It’s possible that some calcium dust and cactus dust is present in the d-limonene after getting it out. You should always filter the d-limonen to get this junk out.