Firstly thanks to everyone who has contributed to this forum - the thought of trying something like this was quite daunting and whilst there is a LOT of info on the forum its also quite hard to decipher it all - I spent many hours reading various threads and TEKS. I chose the CYB HYBRID mainly because the guide has nice pictures and it was made in the UK so felt familiar to me. I have also included some tips below for people from the UK.
I also watched numerous extraction videos on YouTube and Rumble beforehand - what I learned from these were
- its not an exact science and the quantities of ingredients vary a lot - so don't sweat it too much
- different people have different ways - like 4 different ways of shaking a bottle
- I personally am not going to spend 20 extra hours waiting to eek out a few hundred extra mg. I would rather get it done quickly - even if it means losing some product. In my own case I have a busy household so don't have space to leave things lying around for days.
Below are some general thoughts and tips:
The whole process with 3 pulls took just shy of 5 hours. So if I did it again I think I would allow 4.5 hours.
The freezing parts added a further 2 days (I did re-crystallization) as I didn't have a fan.
All of the ingredients can be bought from the UK biggest online shop and its actually hard trying to find some of them in our major DIY stores - particularly the lighter fluid.
I have seen Naphtha is available in a 1l bottle on a certain auction site so I may use that in the future.
I had 250g mimosa. I split it into two 2000ml mason jars. I was a bit worried about how these would handle heat. They were OK in the end, but...
I heated up the mimosa and water at the start but I didn't use heat later one once the Naphtha came into play because I was worried about the glass breaking/exploding!
Next time I may buy bottles made out of Borosilicate glass - but they are expensive. I have seen different views on whether using an Erlenmeyer is good or not (someone said the narrow spout can cause emulsion).
Buy lab style beakers - in theory they should handle heat better but also nice to have a spout for pouring and measuring.
My biggest hassle was sucking out the naphtha. I had a useless turkey baster and a 10ml and 2ml pipette. I struggled to get the naphtha out clean. I did use a water wash (which isn't in CYBs method I think) - but it meant I didn't need to get the bulk of the naphtha out clean because I could have a second go when it was in the smaller beaker. Going forward I am going to buy a volumetric flask with a narrow neck and a better 30ml pipette. This will let me extract the bulk of the naphtha into a beaker first, then I can pour it into the flask and get most of it out and only worry about the dirty water at a very narrow point (i.e. the part where naphtha and dirty water meet will be very narrow). Also you only need to get ALL/MOST of the naphtha out on your final pull - I was tending to worry about getting it all out on all 3 pulls.
I knocked up the caustic soda/water combo outside and left it in the shed to cool down before putting it into the bottle - which was warm. The mixing can be done right at the start when you mix the mimosa with water because that will be on the heat for an hour so the caustic soda has about an hour to cool down.
There is a limit to the amount of salt that can dissolve in 100ml (or multiples) of water - which I found out the hard way!
As I was using more mimosa than the 50g in the TEK I did increase the other ingredients but not always in proportion. I think I may have used 120ml of Naphtha - I may reduce in future to 100ml.
The mason jars are KIND OF water tight. I did all my shaking over the sink and some liquid did come out.
One thing I regret not doing is separating all my pulls into separate freeze jars. As I was going along, I put them all into two mason jars but then split them up across 3 flat dishes to freeze. In future I will just keep each pull in a separate dish so I can see what comes out of each pull. I use slightly smaller dishes around 20cm x 15cm than the big ones a lot of other people use.
I poured my used naphtha onto some grass (spread it out). The black water with the roof (filtered) and down the sink.
Total yield was 2.4g and 2.17 after Re-crystallization.
My equipment was maybe in region of £80-£90. I need to buy a better pipette, flask, naphtha and a fan to go again (probably another £60) but overall its good value when you consider the alterative costs.
I also watched numerous extraction videos on YouTube and Rumble beforehand - what I learned from these were
- its not an exact science and the quantities of ingredients vary a lot - so don't sweat it too much
- different people have different ways - like 4 different ways of shaking a bottle
- I personally am not going to spend 20 extra hours waiting to eek out a few hundred extra mg. I would rather get it done quickly - even if it means losing some product. In my own case I have a busy household so don't have space to leave things lying around for days.
Below are some general thoughts and tips:
The whole process with 3 pulls took just shy of 5 hours. So if I did it again I think I would allow 4.5 hours.
The freezing parts added a further 2 days (I did re-crystallization) as I didn't have a fan.
All of the ingredients can be bought from the UK biggest online shop and its actually hard trying to find some of them in our major DIY stores - particularly the lighter fluid.
I have seen Naphtha is available in a 1l bottle on a certain auction site so I may use that in the future.
I had 250g mimosa. I split it into two 2000ml mason jars. I was a bit worried about how these would handle heat. They were OK in the end, but...
I heated up the mimosa and water at the start but I didn't use heat later one once the Naphtha came into play because I was worried about the glass breaking/exploding!
Next time I may buy bottles made out of Borosilicate glass - but they are expensive. I have seen different views on whether using an Erlenmeyer is good or not (someone said the narrow spout can cause emulsion).
Buy lab style beakers - in theory they should handle heat better but also nice to have a spout for pouring and measuring.
My biggest hassle was sucking out the naphtha. I had a useless turkey baster and a 10ml and 2ml pipette. I struggled to get the naphtha out clean. I did use a water wash (which isn't in CYBs method I think) - but it meant I didn't need to get the bulk of the naphtha out clean because I could have a second go when it was in the smaller beaker. Going forward I am going to buy a volumetric flask with a narrow neck and a better 30ml pipette. This will let me extract the bulk of the naphtha into a beaker first, then I can pour it into the flask and get most of it out and only worry about the dirty water at a very narrow point (i.e. the part where naphtha and dirty water meet will be very narrow). Also you only need to get ALL/MOST of the naphtha out on your final pull - I was tending to worry about getting it all out on all 3 pulls.
I knocked up the caustic soda/water combo outside and left it in the shed to cool down before putting it into the bottle - which was warm. The mixing can be done right at the start when you mix the mimosa with water because that will be on the heat for an hour so the caustic soda has about an hour to cool down.
There is a limit to the amount of salt that can dissolve in 100ml (or multiples) of water - which I found out the hard way!
As I was using more mimosa than the 50g in the TEK I did increase the other ingredients but not always in proportion. I think I may have used 120ml of Naphtha - I may reduce in future to 100ml.
The mason jars are KIND OF water tight. I did all my shaking over the sink and some liquid did come out.
One thing I regret not doing is separating all my pulls into separate freeze jars. As I was going along, I put them all into two mason jars but then split them up across 3 flat dishes to freeze. In future I will just keep each pull in a separate dish so I can see what comes out of each pull. I use slightly smaller dishes around 20cm x 15cm than the big ones a lot of other people use.
I poured my used naphtha onto some grass (spread it out). The black water with the roof (filtered) and down the sink.
Total yield was 2.4g and 2.17 after Re-crystallization.
My equipment was maybe in region of £80-£90. I need to buy a better pipette, flask, naphtha and a fan to go again (probably another £60) but overall its good value when you consider the alterative costs.
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