Downwardsfromzero, I like you. 😜 I appreciate your support and attention. I have decided today, that I will be honorable to myself, and give my salt-and-vinegar tech a go after all. In the name of science! 🤓
Now with your support, I am confident. Your advice will be implemented.
I like the Na2CO3 backup idea, interesting.

Should one maybe make the Na2CO3 additional step, part of the main technique? Is there a better chance of success if one straight away mix Na2CO3 with the Chrystal mix, say 50/50 proportion?

Attached is my scale. 🤪

No - in this case the sequence needs to be:
acid (vinegar) simmer,
evaporate,
(optional -experimental!- pull with acetone at this point),
sodium carbonate paste,
dry again,
pull with acetone,
precip with FASA (also with the no sodcarb pull).

The science bit will be testing out the hypothesis that DMT acetate from a vinegar bark cook can be pulled from the crude extract into acetone, and subsequently precipitated with FASA. If this turns out to be the case it would remove the need of adding base, which is... *interesting*. And if it doesn't work you can just add base (sodcarb) and carry on as though nothing happened.


I think you may find it tricky to weigh out a few milligrams with that scale of yours...

We do have a special thread for pictures of scales and balances, btw
I have a few antique examples which ought to be posted there, come to think of it.

I am taking notes. 🙏

Yes, weighing out stuff is and will be a challenge. I need those comparison photos. I believe most members out there can not afford those fine scales, they might just avoid certain techniques because of this. I am hoping I can still do FASA somehow. 😔
One day when I actually get fumulates, or crystal, it's going to be interesting. Mg is pretty tiny. I thought, maybe half a grain of rice, or matchhead size, although that might even be to much.
Challenges is alway there.
Can you direct me to that threads, I need it desperately. Maybe re-post, so that members can have more access to it. I can not yet comment on posts in the main areas, and that is super frustrating.
Thanks again 🙏

After evaporation of all fluids, I have some red/brown salt.
When I get my acetone, to what level, in the glass container, do i fill up with acetone, and would I shake it and let it stand for a while, before pulling it out to add FASA.
I know someone will have good suggestions, it's an experiment. 😜
I guess there will be some layer of acetone left, to ensure no presipatated NaCl or impurities are included in the acetone pull?

So it looks like you have your crude acacia acetates. How much does that weigh? And how much plant material did you start with?

Take, say, 5 or 10g of it and see what dissolves in acetone. You only need to add enough to cover, plus a finger's width or so. Give it a good swirl - warm very cautiously with a water bath if it's only dissolving slowly. There may well be inorganic salts present (any ideas there? ) so don't worry if some insoluble material remains.

Allow any solids to settle, then carefully decant off the liquid. You'll need to be using containers that pour nicely - ideally labware like beakers or Erlenmeyer flasks. There are some kitchen measuring jugs that are basically lab beakers with a handle so you might want to look out for something like that. It's a good idea to decant through a filter as well. Repeat the extraction of the solid material with another small portion of acetone to check if anything else will dissolve.

Once you have some nice clear acetone solution you can start dripping in your FASA. BUT - if you have used a water bath you may want to dry the acetone extract with something like anhydrous sodium sulfate first. FASA precipitation works best when conditions are as dry (i.e. your acetone is free from water) as possible.

This is the exciting bit - if you get a precipitate that might be a small breakthrough in extraction methodology. There is a strong chance that it will be contaminated with inorganic fumarates such as the calcium, magnesium or potassium salts. These will have come from the natural salts in the plant material and can be cleaned up by basing as a sodium carbonate paste, pulling back into acetone, and precipitating with FASA once more. But wait until you've done the following comparison, below:-

If pulling the crude acetates works, it may or may not be advantageous to use the sodcarb paste here at this later stage in comparison with basing the crude acetate tea. Hence it is worth taking another 5 or 10g of your crude acetate and basing with sodcarb before the acetone pull. You can then compare the results of this based acetone pull with the acetone pull direct from the crude acetates.

Hopefully this makes sense to you - write out a list of how you'll proceed and I'll check it for you.

I am so privileged that you share your time, knowledge and attention with me. I have to read this post a few times I believe. I will post any new developments. At the moment I am waiting for the courier to deliver my acetone and fumaric acid. TIA 🙄 (This Is Africa). The swiss invented the whatch, but Africa owns time.
There is no before and after measuring, as I showed you how my scale look like. I am trying to build myself a better, more sensitive one. I found out that an average grain of normal white rice, is weighing in at 20mg. So that will be used to get to my FASA fumaric acid measurements. I will premix 100ml FASA and add about 500mg. I have to try. The flow of things on my DMT adventure, is just amazing. So I believe 2023 will reward my focus and attention and love for the process and knowledge.
I really have an obsession now. Taking DMT is now top on my bucket list..😁🙏🙏

I actually weighed out the same amount of plant material and salt, 100g each. The salts, after washing out with vinegar, is less. If this works, I will do the experiment again, this time with feeling!! 😁 It is Acacia cyclops, and it is a long shot, with a longer shot extraction tech. So I am hopeful, but not writing anything down yet. There is other experiments already based that first need attention if this don't produce results. Ecklonia maxima, Acacia longifolia and Acacia longifolia cancer. So, between everything, I just need 20mg of dimethyltriptamine, so this old man can tick that one off, and meet my Ego. I have been suffering from depression my whole life, and I have been reading some scientific research on dmt's use in treating depression and bipolar, and I am frantically holding my breath. Imagine!!!! 🙏

My 2023 Rice-Micro-Scale, version 1.1 😜
If a grain of rice is 20mg, I would rater put a bit more in, and I want to pre-mix 100ml of FASA, how many rice grains? 🌾
Straight from the tutor's knowledge? I see to many posts with different measurements of how much fumaric acid to saturate 1ml of acetone. 😊

Well, I love the look of the scale at the very least! You can make calibration weights out of pieces of aluminium foil, measured by area. But of course, you first need to know how much a standard area of alu foil weighs...

I don't know if you have any old electronics lying around, but you can build a pretty good microbalance using an old ammeter gauge. Criterion for acceptance is that the needle doesn't bounce if you shake it around.

Some more threads to read:
What scale do you use?
Accuarate milligram scale recommendations?
Recommendation for accurate and hopefully not too expensive milligram scale
Weighing accurately with milligram scales
Good quality scales
get good ...NO very good scales
Rough calculation of proper dosage without milligram scale
Scales - cheap vs expensive

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=680623#post680623

So this seems way too simple to work...?

1) Boil bark in vinegar/water for a while, multiple times, separating liquid out each time
2) Discard Bark, evaporate all liquids, leaving DMT Acetate?? (With pollutants)
3) Drip Soda Ash, 7g:100ml water
4) Fridge for a week
5) Filter out precipitated freebase

Optional 6) Naptha freeze for more pure product??


Reference https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=33080

Is it this easy? Run a brewing distiller for a few days, and all you need is bark, bicarb soda (to make soda ash) and vinegar?

man, I don't know where you live or what you are doing, but I just want to mention that like 99% of all teks involve basing the solution


your manner of speech really makes me think you know what you're doing but I want to make sure so I'm going to just offer you what I understand of the difference between a salt and a base

salts are much more stable than bases. they behave differently from freebases. when a freebase is bound to an acid, it's going to behave much differently. usually salts of freebases are soluble in water, and freebases that are not salts are not soluble in water, so they go into xylene and naphtha and whatever

everybody highly reccomends basing your solution, be it with lye or sodium carbonate or ammonia, it is highly encouraged.

a salt is a base married to an acid. when a base is married to an acid, the molecule has sort of a positive end and a negative end. that makes the molecule polar, like water, so salts stay in aqueous solution. when you add a base, usually sodium married to a very weak acid, the imbalance between the powerful sodium metal ion and the weak, (hydroxide in lye, carbonate in sodium carbonate) acid ion break apart and form new bonds with water, which is powerful itself. This imbalance in the chemistry of water works to destroy the bonds between the salts that naturally bind the alkaliod you are looking for, and because there is an imbalance in the aqueous solution, they readily seek refuge in organic solutions, such as xylene, naptha, or others. If these solvents are miscible with water, such as acetone, you're sort of out of luck, as there's no way to separate them from the aqueous phase. If they are immiscible with water, however, the alkaloids may be found there, as basic solutions repel basic compounds. Sodium metal is basic, yes, but it will always stay in water, because it is inorganic. Alkaloids are primarily organic, and belong in the organic phase whenever the aqueous phase is sufficiently basic.

I think I understand you wanting to use this tek without a base at all, although I don't know why.

(I think I remember some old school texts using the term married so ok)

Don't worry, we acknowledge that this non-basing tek is purely experimental in order to test the hypothesis that water-pulled acetates can be crudely recovered, dissolved in acetone, and then precipitated as fumarates using FASA. We have also mentioned that, should this turn out not to work, nothing is lost and we can then resort to basing with, e.g., sodium carbonate.

It would just be rather nice to have a base-free tek that doesn't require liquid/liquid partitioning, don't you think?

Moral: make sure you read all the posts carefully before replying!

FASA stuff going over my head so far, so i'm moreso just trying to understand more about the acid boil process. Additionally, any salt stuff i'm not comprehending too well. I've read that too much temperature and removing too much liquid can destroy any alkaloids (obviously, what is concrete fact here? All the nexus posts sort of bubble about in my head and I experiment to see what is true and isn't in my case, but without ever successfully yielding anything, this doesn't work very effectively). So the idea of boiling off all liquid goes against what I have learned so far.

And what about evaporation and pH... I have read that HCL bonds are too strong, so evaporation decreases pH with it in solution, and also have read that evaporating with weaker acids/bases evens out the pH elsewhere.

I have never worked with acetone or any alcohol in teks, so the aqueous stuff that vixi mentions (Thanks for the reply too) is out of my depth so far. Will be what I read about next.

I also can't find a confident response to the question, does over acidifying/basing destroy DMT? So all up, this thread seems to conflict with my current knowledge and also stands as a great learning experience.

If we have a simpler tek without using strong bases, nexians can afford to experiment more freely and document findings for species they wouldn't have tested otherwise, as is certainly my case. I also tend to jump to conclusions out of optomism, and this is a very interesting thread!!

Yes, this thread definitely conflicts with current knowledge!

The principle is that by specifically dissolving the DMT from the plant material by using vinegar, we can recover DMT acetate. The acetate solution is then carefully dried over a hot water bath - forcing airflow also helps with this. Tests have shown that (pure) DMT acetate is soluble in acetone. Tests have also shown that DMT fumarate is insoluble in acetone.

The two 'ifs' here are:-
if the evaporated vinegar cooks produce good enough DMT acetate to dissolve in acetone, and
if the acetic acid which also forms on addition of FASA (fumaric acid saturated acetone) doesn't mess things up...
then this stands a chance of actually working.

It may be (in fact, the more I think about it, the more likely it seems - however, see the next paragraph) that acetic acid will cause the DMT fumarate to stay in solution. In that case, the remainder of the acetate can be basified with sodium carbonate paste and we can revert to the standard form of extraction. The failed base-free test can also have the acetone evaporated off and the remaining acetate/fumarate mix get dumped in with the rest of the original acetate extract.

It would be helpful if somebody could test the solubility of DMT fumarate in a mixture of anhydrous acetone and, say, about 1.2% 0.6% of glacial acetic acid, btw. Why 1.2% 0.6% acetic acid in acetone? Because this corresponds to double the 0.618g/100mL solubility of fumaric acid in acetone, while taking into account a little extra volume of acetone used to dissolve the DMT acetate [Edit: and the 29:15 MW ratio of fumaric to acetic - my mental arithmetic got molar ratios and weight ratios a bit mixed up last night!] Maybe 1.2% 0.6% acetic acid will at least allow the fumarate to precipitate as a goo?

Furthermore, both pKa's of fumaric acid (pka1 = 3.03, pka2 = 4.44 (15 °C)) are lower than that of acetic acid (pKa = 4.75) so I consider that kind of a good sign overall, at least.

Otherwise we could look for a fumarate salt that is soluble in acetone, and use that to precipitate the DMT if (fi) the corresponding acetate is also soluble in acetone. We're a bit restricted in the choice of cations here if toxicity is to be avoided. Using something like pyridinium fumarate (for example) doesn't seem like a good idea. Yeah, just using a cheap, commonly available base makes far moar sense, indeed!

Meanwhile, I'm hoping Ouboet hasn't blown himself up with the acetone, and is merely still waiting for it to arrive.