A naptha pull and lye question

[Darkbb]

Hi I might do an extraction tonight (yes I will be posting lots of pictures) and I was just wondering how long I should let the naptha and bark water be mixed together. In nomans tek it says a few minutes but I have read otherwise on sum other forums just wondering what you guys think here. also is nomans tek adapted to starting with powdered bark or am i going to have to take the 15 ml to gram ratio and multiply it by 1.5?

Also are my calculations correct

with 100g rb
1500ml distilled water
100g lye

with 100g rb x1.5
2250ml distilled water
150g lye

The reason I say multiply it by 1.5 is because I've read that it gets too thick but maybe the person that posted that didn't have accurate measurements. I have a scale and a measuring cup so mine will be exact. and also I'm going to try mixing the bark with the lye water without adding the extra lye and water first just to see what happens then my plan was to add the extra lye and water that i would need to make the original measurements as if they were multiplied by 1.5

 

[Viracocha]

Those amounts seem excessive

If you plan to do a 1Kg extraction, you'll be working with 20L of liquid? far too much. Not to mention 1.5kg of lye!

200grams of lye is enough to basify a strongly acidic 3L bark tea made from 2Kg of bark, but this does depend on process

For 100grams of rootbark i'd thing that even 500mL is overly excessive, i'm sure you could get away with 300mL


If you follow Noman's tek to the word then you shouldn't have any problems. Many people post their successes and thanks to him on here, so give it a go

Personally, i've found a few minutes to be fine

 

[Darkbb]

Following the nomans tek would you suggest that I only let the naptha sit for 5 minutes or longer

 

[moracca]

In my experience, the naptha separates from the water/bark/lye mixture very quickly, within a minute or two (you will know it is pretty much separated when you stop seeing bubbles forming between the bark and naptha layers and it looks like a nice glassy smooth barrier between the layers). You basically just mix it up gently, let it separate, mix it up, separate, mix, separate, and then suck up the naptha layer and throw it in the freezer. I had 200g bark, 200g lye, 3L water, and I did 4 separate naptha pulls of 150mL each (basically following the tek to the T). I never had any issues with the bark mixture being too thick, in fact it was the perfect consistency, and allowed the naptha to separate off very quickly.

 

[Darkbb]

i just did the tek last night. unsucesfully.

i used 100g bark
1500ml water
and 100g lye
100ml naptha

the naptha after mixed with the brew (in a milk jug) would separate out but i never could get more than 50 ml out. it just wasnt coming out and forming a nice naptha layer on top. I've saved the 50 ml that i pulled and i am going to try to evap some of it then freeze precip it.

I'm going to do the same tek tonight but in a taller skinnier glass bottle that i hope almost fills all the way up to the top.

I'm still no sure why the naptha wouldn't come out. could it have been because it was in a milk jug instead of a tall and skinny jar.

btw the naptha that did separate separated very quickly within 1 minute at the most.

 

[moracca]

When I tried it, I used a very large diameter jug for the mixing... probably close to 1 foot in diameter. although it made the mixing nice and easy, I quickly found out that this was almost impossible to separate off the naptha layer since it was so thin. I ended up just taking a jar with a handle, and dipping it into the mix once the naptha separated off, and trying to pick up as much of that layer as possible (but its ok if you get some of the black stuff), then putting that in a tall skinny necked bottle and let it separate again. It was then MUCH easier to extract the naptha layer off, since it was about 4 inches high instead of about a centimeter

 

[Darkbb]

did you end up still getting most of the naptha out or did you have less naptha in the end than what you started out with like me.

did you put the bark/water brew in the tall skinny bottle then got more naptha?

 

[moracca]

I probably didn't get ALL of the naptha out, but i would say it was pretty damn close. Afterwards, I could see no naptha layer at all on the bark mix in the big jug. I wasn't overly concerned with it, because I knew I would be doing further extractions, so its no big deal to have some naptha left on top if there is any. On your very last extraction, you may want to fuss with it a bit more, but even then, if you dip the jar into the big jug, and basically just skim off the top layer of naptha and a little bit of the bark mix, transfer it to the tall glass, it will reseparate, and its very easy to get just about all the naptha off. If the neck of the bottle is small enough, the little bit of naptha you can't suck off will be so small in volume that it really won't make any difference. Remember, its better to leave some naptha in your mix than pull some of the mix up into your naptha and contaminate it

EDIT: Also, if you're naptha is not separating off very well, i suppose its possible that your water/lye/bark mixture is a bit too sludgy... What is the consistency like? mine was very runny, not clumpy at all. If its too thick, you may need to add some more water/lye. just a thought

 

[acolon_5]

Adding table salt will help the layers separate. No salt will end up in your final product and won't affect the extraction any.

Using a milk jug one can squeeze the naphtha layer up to the very top where the jug narrows. I can usually get almost every drop out doing it this way.

 

[Darkbb]

I am going to do the extraction once again tonight.

100g rb
100g lye
1500ml water

I might be using a taller and skinnier bottle, depends if my buddy brings it over, but if I have to use a milk jug I'm going to do the calcluations to put the naptha layer right at the top.

I'll keep some table salt near by.