CatMolecule
Rising Star
Hey all. My friend's computer broke so I'm helping him out. He has some questions.. He obtained 130g of MHRB pre-powdered (very fine, like flour he says). I asked him if it was the inner side of the bark but he doesn't know. Told me it came pre-grounded and pinkish. He used Noman's tek w/ VM&P naptha, lye and tap water. This was done in two batches.. He basically used the exact numbers from Noman's tek (15ml of water for each gram of bark, etc) BUT! mistake #1: He wasn't thinking straight and forgot that a milliliter of naptha is not necessarily 1 gram. Please read on.. batch #1 Added 65g of lye to ~975ml of water. Stirred vigorously until it all dissolved. Added 65g bark, shook jar, observed thick foam on top (1-2") and let sit in dark place for 1-2 hours. Added 65g (not ml) of naptha and turned jar end over end for 1 min, 3 times. No emulsion formed, as expected. Decanted naptha out and placed in a collection jar in the freezer. Some lye got into the jar due to use of garbage equipment. Repeated this 3 times. So he had 3 collection jars in the freezer, and then added naptha again to the main bark jar and let it sit for about 36 hours, agitating occasionally. Observed some crystals forming 24 hours later (didn't check before that).. didn't see much so he let them sit for longer. In the meantime, took naptha out of main bark jar and put into another collection jar. Next day, all jars had crystals, and the last one which had the naptha in for 1 day instead of 5 minutes had the most crystals. Scraped crystals off bottom/sides of jar and poured naptha/lye onto a coffee filter. Washed w/ 10% ammonia when appropriate (too much lye). Before discarding the base, he did another naptha pull, keeping the naptha in for about 2 days. Not enough crystals formed to encourage another pull. Base was discarded. Coffee filters were left to dry, then crystals were scraped off each one, combined and stored for later bioassay. The big question.. his yield? Less than 0.1g is all he could tell me because that's as low as his scale will go. It looked to be about the size of a pencil eraser (is that 50-60mg?), but it was probably way less due to impurities. Batch #2 Same numbers and procedure as above, but did 6 naptha pulls. Last 3 pulls were from naptha kept in base for 12-24 hours each. He heated up naptha and base for the first pull to see if it would make a significant difference -- it didn't. He was confused as to why he ran out of naptha unexpectedly (wanted more pulls goddamn it!).. wondering where it went, he remembered that he's been measuring naptha VOLUME using a SCALE! It's likely he was adding way more naptha than he should have been because 1ml naptha is less than 1g, from his experience here. Batch #2's yield was clearly more than before, but was not weighed at all. My sometimes silly friend can measure yield if he finds a household substance w/ the same weight as spice; Salt or something. He will measure out 1.0g of that on his scale, and then divide it in halves counting down until he reaches what looks to be equivalent to the tiny amount of spice he has. Licked finger indicates a salty taste, likely just lye. Spice is shiny, crystalline, white. Some yellowish because he decided to skip ammonia washes on two poor pulls to at least salvage something. Overall quality seems ok.. but he was going for quantity. Other than mistake #1, what went wrong here? What is a decent yield from 65g of MHRB, taking into account mechanical loss? Had he gotten whole bark, would the yield have been significantly higher? (he knows NOW that most pre-powdered bark is outer) No bioassay yet.. he says he's waiting on a way to measure out an exact dosage.
