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First-timer botching things.. is it salvageable?

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Skaeleen

Rising Star
I love you all.

An acquaintance of mine got to sample some DMT for his first time about a month ago at a Rainbow Gathering. He was the fourth person to hit the DMT-laden pipe, so minimal effects were felt, but it filled him with an unbearable excitement to experiment further.

3 days ago, his materials arrived in the mail, and he began his first ever extraction.

He started with 200g of MHRB. Basified to 13.8. Stirred and let sit for 2 hours or so.

Then he foolishly added 250ml or so of Acetone to this mixture; thinking it'd make a good solvent. Stirred 15 minutes, let layers separate, then pulled with a turkey baster. This dark orange acetone was set aside to evaporate, and an identical pull was done. After the second pull, there was still a good amount of Acetone left in the mixture, as he couldn't effectively get it all. He added perhaps another 300ml of Acetone to the mixture, in preparation for a future pull.

After evapping for 2 days, he was left with a tray of dark orange, oily goo. A few tiny crystals around the sides. He carefully scraped all the crystals off of the side and sampled them in a bong to confirm psychoactivity; yep, it works. :D

Here's where things get complicated. Frustrated with his blobs of "earwax" that didn't seem to be getting any dryer, he began to research online, and found that Acetone wasn't an ideal solvent. He added a bit of fresh Acetone to my tray, dissolved all of the orange goo in it, and re-added this to his basic solution (still containing an inch or so of acetone on the top from 2 days prior). He bought a can of VM&P Naphtha, and added maybe 250ml to the pot. So now, he has 2 solvents within his pot, the Naphtha floating atop the acetone.

He did my best to stir the mixture very well, as he was worried that the layer of acetone between my basic solution and naphtha might block transfer of alkaloids. He also wondered if the acetone in the mix would even "let go" of any of the alkaloids it contained, as he's heard that DMT freebase is more soluble in acetone than in naphtha.

He siphoned off all of the solvent with a turkey baster and placed it in a mason jar, where it immediately separated in to 2 layers. Dark orange, oily-looking Acetone on the bottom, and a small amount of clearer, slightly yellow Naphtha on top.

He then siphoned off the naphtha, and set it in its own tray to evap, noting that while it was no longer clear, it hadn't seem to gain much color from the mix. Just very slightly yellowish.

He also set my much larger portion of dark orange acetone in to its own tray to evaporate.

That's where he's at. Waiting for evap, and getting a bit nervous that he's ruined things.




What course of action would you recommend he take from here? Should he let his tray of dark orange acetone evaporate completely again, and then do a freeze precip on the "earwax" that's left with my naphtha? Also, is it imperative that his vessel be ABSOLUTELY airtight during the freeze precip? (He has a glass candle-holder the size of a babyfood jar, with a fitting lid)

Should he try another pull with Naphtha, now that there is very little acetone left in the mix? He feels like the Acetone might have acted like a shield in the middle, keeping his naphtha from touching the MHRB mud.


Thanks!~
 
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I'm pretty sure if you soak the "earwax" in naphtha the DMT will dissolve into it and leave behind the oils/fats, not all of them, but it may help clear it up. (Be sure to wait for a second opinion on this, i'm not 100% sure)

As for the jar with bark in it, I think if you just let it sit without a lid the acetone will evaporate off, then you can proceed with the naphtha pulls. (Again, wait for a second opinion on this)
 
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Thanks for the prompt reply, Shrabbit!

My acquaintance was just about to attempt another naphtha pull, even though there is doubtlessly still some 'tone atop the mixture. When he last pulled, he spent a great deal of time getting every bit of solvent that he could out of the mix, but when using a turkey baster and a very wide pot, its nigh on impossible to get it all.

He'll give the pot some time to evap any remaining solvents off before he attempts another pull with naphtha.

When his tray of orange acetone completely evap's again (which will be a while; its quite deep) he will try dissolving the "earwax" in naphtha, and I'll post the results for him.
 
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Ok, well firstly, and I probably don#t need to tell you this by now - really really really do your research next time, for your own sake. You are wanting to extract something that you are going to put in your body so it behooves you to take care you take the proper safety precautions in order to get a decent product. We have an elaborate wiki for all these things and there is info in the forum as well, plenty of it, that should provide you with enough knowledge to not harm yourself.

Now, acetone is a bad solvent because it mixes with water. When you do your pulls with acetone you are pulling basified water together with the acetone+dmt. Whatever crystals or earwax you have it is contaminated with whatever base you used.

So I come to my second point - If you want quality help, you will have to provide more information, for example the materials you used - which base did you use, how much water did you add etc. The more info, the more likely we can help.

I'm pretty sure you can salvage your extraction. However a certain level of focus and understanding should be present for performing this extraction because of what you are intending to do with your final product. No one, least of all yourself, wants harm to befall you, so please be very careful.

Here is how you save your extraction - at least this should work in theory...:

a) read the wiki, read some of the relevant teks there, read the health and safety section. This is an absolute must. Even if I give you instructions they will be worthless unless you understand the why and what of it.

b) let the liquid in your MHRB mix evaporate completely. You may have to spread it out in an oven pan or something. Don't use heat as the spice could evaporate (low heat maybe ok - does anyone know?). You will just have to be patient for this. Maybe a fan can help.

c) Once it's completely dry you can take your earwax-resin and add it to the now dry MHRB-lye mix, since you can't use it as it is anyway. Also whatever the naphtha pulled, just add that as well, since who knows what exactly happened there.

d) follow a tek from the wiki. You might not need to add much lye any more since your MHRB should already contain the lye you added the first time. Thus also be careful when handling it, since it will be caustic. Wear goggles and gloves!!


Please be more careful with these things. We all know how impatient one can get in matters of such great potential, but even though all these chemicals can be easily bought, they are not harmless. You could hurt yourself a great deal with these things and without proper precautions the chances of you hurting yourself just sky-rocket. Reading about you randomly adding solvents to each other etc. is really quite scary for me, because it makes me wonder what else you might be doing or not doing properly...

Please read more before you continue or try anything like this again!!! A proper plan and understanding can save you a lot of trouble, time, pain, and danger.

be safe
much love
Enoon
 
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Also, heating the solution will help evaporate the acetone faster, be sure you have adequate ventilation and no open flames if you do this.

And take Enoon's advice to heart.

Edit:
The Boiling Point of Acetone is 134°F (~57°C)
And the (supposed) Boiling Point of DMT is 140°F (60°C)

So as long as you keep it well under 140°F (60°C), your dmt should be fine, and the acetone should evaporate quickly.

And although what Enoon suggested would take a while, that would probably be the best way to go about it.
 
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bp of dmt at 60 c is at 1.3tor or something. its well over 100c at regular air pressure.

just simmer until it doesnt smell horrid then use naphtha. outside or open windows with big box fan etc. no open flame. if you cant get a heat source outside and you have tons of acetone to remove just prepare a boiling water bath outside and run boiling water in and outside. have 2 pots boiling so no time is wasted.
 
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Thanks for the advice Enoon! Very helpful. Laughed good and long at the last sentence of c) :D

More details:
My Guatemalan friend dissolved 200 grams of finely powdered inner root bark in 1300ml of tap water, which had already been basified with 7 1/2 tablespoons of sodium hydroxide micro-beads dissolved in intervals over a 2-hour period and allowed to cool before introduction of bark.

He didn't wear gloves, but did wear safety glasses. He is EXTREMELY cautious with his mud. Its in a 5-liter stainless steel pot, with a slightly oversized lid atop it. He always takes a few minutes before working with the mud to do breathing exercises and get zoned-in that his movements be precise, and his grip steady. Especially since a close call of sorts he had while 'workin the baster'. He burned his shoulder on the desk lamp beside him while stirring his mud, and was able to stop the arm-jerking auto-response without splashing any solution, but was given a heightened sense of the dangers involved, and has been much more careful since. He also keeps an open bottle of vinegar within reach, and does all his work sitting on the ground in open space, with nothing above that could potentially fall.

Shrabbit, my day-laboring pal would love to speed up the evap process, but the poor bastard's just not capable of heating the mixture. He cant even put it out in the sun in the backyard, because the dogs will get in to it. Would adding more lye heat it up? Would that even be a good idea?

Anyhoo, his trays are still evaporating. There are a few little bloops of orange acetone here and there around the bottom of his evapping naphtha tray. Staying separated though. Naphtha is at 1/4 of its original volume and getting quite cloudy. He's thinking perhaps anything resulting from this evap could potentially be OK, as long as he stays away from the little acetone globules (there aren't many). What sayest thou? I certainly dont want him to get hurt if there is a great danger, but he can be a bit foolhardy; especially when the shimmer of light off a crystal catches his eye.

He'll evaporate the tray of dark orange acetone down in to goo, then reintroduce to the mud. And its late enough at night now that he can leave the lid off of his pot of mud without fear of surprise visitors!
 
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Do you have any heating mats or electric blankets? These work very well as an alternative heating source, And usually they cant get hot enough to do any damage to the mix.

Adding more lye would heat it up, but I wouldn't recommend putting excess amounts of it in your mix, unless your going to be doing a wash or re-crystallization on it. Then it wouldn't hurt, and may work very well as the lye would heat it up from the inside. (I'm still kinda iffy on this idea though)

As for putting it outside, what about putting the pot in a cage with something weighing the cage down. Or do your dogs like to get into everything every-which-way possible, (I had an Australian Shepherd like that).
 
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Skaeleen,

it's really difficult to say if whatever you pulled with your naphtha is going to be ok. Theoretically naphtha won't pull lye or other things, however from time to time water and particulates from the ground MHRB have been known to become suspended in the naphtha, which sometimes gives it coloring. I have no idea how it is with acetone and naphtha, so really, who knows what your evaporated product contains. also I don't know what the contents of your evaporating dish are and how easily you could get one product separated from the other.

At the very least you should scrape it and do a recrystalization step with it, or, scrape and perform an A/B step. I would absolutely perform some kind of purification on it before even thinking about putting it anywhere near my body. Not only can you harm yourself, but the thought of tripping on dmt while wondering in the back of my head whether what I just smoked was contaminated by lye or something else gives me the shivers. Bad trip pre-programmed!

much love
Enoon
 
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The naphtha tray evaporated completely today, leaving behind very little of interest on the glass. just a faint residue. My friend's mud mixture continues to evaporate the unwanted acetone, and he's going to make an attempt to siphon off more of the solvent layer tonight to speed the process.

His latest concern is with the metal baking pan full of maybe 400ml of acetone extract that he pulled yesterday, and separated from the naphtha. It evaporated down to about half of its original volume (150-200ml) when he put it outside in the sun today, but an overhanging tree dropped particles of plant debris in to it! (doh) just little tidbits of this and that, and one flower. the majority of the plant matter is floating on the surface. His first thought was to filter this mixture through a coffee filter in to another clean container, but upon inspection of the extract, it appears to be full of small forming crystalline structures floating around. He hasn't seen this sort of saturation in any of his experimentation so far, and feels about 75% certain that these opaque floating little flakes are the alkaloids precipitating as the huge pull evaporates. He's concerned that if he tries to filter out the floating plant particles, that he'll lose these crystals to the filter. Any ideas? Would it be safe to just complete the evaporation with the foreign particles, and add it all back in to the mud? I'd really like to get them out, especially before too much more evaporation takes place, and crystals form on the tree droppings.
 
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Manifested some tweezers. Will start the picking process soon.

Enoon, do you think I could extract the alkaloids from this acetone using vinegar? and then do another STB on the resulting product?
 
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I don't know where you're at with your extraction at the moment. So I'll give you a general answer:

if you have dmt-freebase in your acetone and you use vinegar it will turn into dmt-acetate. Ideally this would crash out of acetone, but if you have an acetone water mix, the dmt-acetate may stay in solution, depending on the ratio of the mixture. If you are using regular vinegar instead of 100% glacial acetic acid you will definitely have substantial water content, and I have no idea how much this will affect the crashing out capabilities of your solution. So personally I wouldn't try this.
I still think you should evaporate everything and do a regular STB or even better an A/B on the dry product. You might need to use warm water to get all of this back in suspension / solution.

But more importantly, and please don't take this the wrong way, I think you should be a bit more mindful about what you're doing. Using your thinking-apparatus should save you quite a bit of trouble. I know this process is a bit confusing the first few times, until one has developed procedure that works, but a little thought and research goes a long way. If you leave something to evap outside where things can fall in, cover with a paper towel or a cloth.
I fear for your safety...

much love
Enoon
 
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Enoon! Thanks again for a helpful reply.

Status Update

My friend's mud finally evaporated most of the acetone. There is more than likely still some acetone trapped with the water, but no longer a distinct layer on top. From this point he let it sit in a closed cabinet without its lid for another day, stirring occasionally. Last night he took it out to see that upon close inspection of the surface, it no longer seems to have any solvent at all, even when blown. No more iridescent sheen. He decided it'd be safe to go for some pulls.

He did 2 naphtha pulls, 150ml each. Stirred each for 4 or 5 minutes or so then set aside for 25 minutes. Combined the pulls in his evap tray, evapped to 70-80ml or so which was quite cloudy. Stuck it the deep freezer at around midnight, pulled it out at 5 this afternoon to find a fresh, light-yellow snow had fallen on the bottom. They're not stuck to the glass by any means, just kind of floating in congregation around the bottom of the baby food jar. Also noticed some snowflake formations(?) floating on the surface. Very thin and difficult to see. He left it out until right now (6pm) so it warmed up considerably. Just popped it back in to see if he could grow them a bit bigger.

He was expecting to see a bit more come out of his first 2 naptha pulls on the 200g of powdered bark, but it seems that the Acetone was pretty efficient in soaking up the freebase; of course, it did get to go first. as well as second. and third.

These darned 3 acetone pulls are still compiled in an 8x8 stainless steel pan, evaporated down to about 3/8 inch depth, from about 1000ml or so (3/12 inches? almost full). This solution also began with perhaps an 1/8 in. layer of naptha atop it, that he was unable to separate further with the turkey baser. He ran the fan directly on it for about 3 hours, which brought it from 1 1/2 inch to 1/2 and inch, and evaporated further overnight without the fan. Today, that tray the most beautiful thing he's seen in the extraction so far! This solution is loaded with apparently solid crystals, some of them as almost as large as a pea, and floating! The vast majority of them are much smaller however; it took his eyes awhile to catch the intricate detail of these tiny formations, and as he moved the light overhead, the whole pan lit up in a brilliant display. There are so many! He's going to grab one out with some tweezers just for inspection, and continue to evap.

He was interested in the dmt-acetate route because he has distilled white vinegar of the household variety, and evaporation of the alkaloid-laden acetone seemed at a halt. Its so pretty now he might just let it complete, and run a mini A/B on whats left.
 
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My friend's crystals look very similar, but haven't touched down yet :). Pulling them out with tweezers didn't work well. He tried to grab one, and it smooshed, so he stopped. The only camera he has is on his pre-paid phone and it cant upload pictures to the internet. >_<
he's still considering hitting it with the vinegar.

From his readings, a good measure of vinegar to use is 1/8 of the volume of your solvent. This doesn't seem like much to my friend, given the low acetic acid content of vinegar. After the vinegar has been mixed in, my friend isn't sure whether he should add water to the mixture or not. He has read in places that you should add 1 part of water after 1 part of vinegar, but in other places the addition of water wasn't mentioned. Adding water back to the acetone doesn't seem like a good idea.
 
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2 cents... if she understands the situation...
Let evap completely. Goo/crystals are ok. Do not add water/vinegar - for oral dosing acetates or citrates can be made with vinegar or citrus respectively, at the time of dosing - allow ~15 min for reaction of freebase with the acids.
If SWIY thinks there is some base solution contamination, scrape it all up and dissolve it in warm naphtha, then do a sodium carbonate wash, decant or sep funnel, then freeze precip - voiala!
If there's little concern for contamination, recrystallize in a shot glass or 2 of Bestine (heptane) or naphtha, freeze precip and away you go!
Hope this has helped - journey safe, journey well.
L
 
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