norman tek question

[FoxDie]

SWIM is preparing his first extraction and has decided to go with norman's tek. However, SWIM wants to know if he could substitute the lye for sodium carbonate... from what SWIM has read, replacing lye with sodium carbonate is only for A/B and not STB, but he doesn't know which one norman's is... SWIM has lye, but prefers not to mess with it...
Thnks

 

[monkeyboy]

as the name implies, STB straight to BASE

If it where swim, he would read, visualize etc the process before undertaking. There are always variables one doesnt expect.

In Nomans tek, the first thing one does is BASIFY (swiy needs HIGH pH, higher then what sodium carbonate will provide- so swiy will use lye) so its a straight to base tek

In an acid/base- the first thing swiy does is acidify, then defat, then basify etc... The alkaloids will have already been drawn out in the acidic soaks, so a super high pH is unessisary (the high pH in a stb tek eats through the bark and freebases the salt- it needs to be extra caustic to do that)