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official extraction help thread

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the whole point of sodium carbonate though is to clean the naptha of any rubbish that you might have taken out from the lye/naptha stage. So, to me, the lye and sodium are doing different jobs, the lye is for breaking down the plant and releasing the dmt and the sodium is for cleaning your naphtha solution

today will b my first ever hit :shock: dont know if im excited or nervous lol
 
SJ said:
the whole point of sodium carbonate though is to clean the naptha of any rubbish that you might have taken out from the lye/naptha stage. So, to me, the lye and sodium are doing different jobs, the lye is for breaking down the plant and releasing the dmt and the sodium is for cleaning your naphtha solution

today will b my first ever hit :shock: dont know if im excited or nervous lol
No, they're doing the same job - lye also "cleans" your naphtha solution (whatever that means) the very same way sodium carbonate does. The idea is that: you wash the naphtha with water to take away everything that is water soluble - might be traces of n-oxide, traces of lye solution and whatnot, since your freebase dmt is water-insoluble. And you want this water to be basic enough (this is where any good base will do, be it potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, ammonia etc) to make the water basic enough to keep dmt freebased and into the naphtha. You could do a just-water clean up but the ~7 pH of water would take away a great portion of dmt.

Also, good luck with your first hit!
 
ok thanks for that, i get what you're saying,i did use a really small pipette and i ended up with trace amounts of gunk in the jar so i guess im ok

as for the hit it was a total fail, must be on my part. Never used a vaporiser before and this is just a cheap one so it probably didn't heat enough or whatever, i dunno, i kept my thumb over it to let it build up and it did tickle my throat but absolutely no effect, not even a slight one, so really disappointing, all i want to do is experience something different or unusual having never tripped before

i think i might just buy a pipe and smoke it old fashioned way
 
I have been placing my crystals to air dry after freeze-precipitating in the hot attic in the belief that a hot, dark, airy attic would ultimately be the best place to dry my crystals. But would the heat destroy the crystalline structure? They are not melting at least. I have only been leaving them in there for about 5-6 hours.
 
5th Dimensional said:
So I suppose you are basically saying that if you have pulled your naptha from the lye base, then you do not need to wash with sodium carbonate?
No.

When you pull with naphtha from the basic mhrb soup (or whatever your plant source is) extra stuff can enter in the naphtha due to sloppy techniques or even due to the fact that some plant compounds are amphoteric (soluble in both water and solvents - such as soap) and so on. In other words your naphtha pull gets everything from the plant that can be dissolved in it, including of course dmt. The basic water wash serves to remove unwanted plant substances that got in the naphtha but you do not really want them; this can be small amounts of lye, maybe even specs of the basic solution and off course substances that are amphoteric.

Think of this example - let's say that your plant has some amount of dmt-n-oxide. This is soluble in both solvents (but less so in naphtha) and water. You get your NP pull, it has dmt and dmt-n-oxide; you wash it with basic water and by doing that you remove dmt-n-oxide. The dmt you'll get now will be purer, since you got rid of the dmt-n-oxide by washing.

In real life, replace "dmt-n-oxide" with whatever may be contaminating in a similar fashion and there you have it! Mind you, many people get very clean, pure dmt without eve, bothering with the wash-this can do with 1-2 extra recrystallisations. There are many ways to skin a cat.
 
Also just to clarify a bit more what inf meant.. When he mentions using lye as a washing solvent, it seems counter productive but its not really.. When you are extracting, you have a very concentrated lye solution with your mimosa. If small specs of that come across (which may be visible or so small you dont see), you're gonna get, appart from the plant impurities and so on, some of that lye. And since it was very concentrated, the lye ammount can be significant.

Now when you wash, you are not anymore using a concentrated lye solution, you would be using a very dilute lye solution for the wash, you'll need very little lye to raise the pH to 10-11. This will redissolve any of those polar plant impurities and extra lye that came across.. And since its a very dilute solution, you shouldnt really have a problem with significant lye amounts contaminating your final product, because you'll anyways remove all of the wash water, and even if very small unnoticed specs remain, they should be insignificant in terms of lye content.

Thats the theory..

That being said, its all up to you, what base you use for washing, if you understand the process and take care that its slightly basic water. Whatever you feel more comfortable with, go for it.
 
Thanks guys. Since this is my first extraction, I so far feel most comfortable with a naphtha wash, which seemed to work pretty good and easily as said in the FAQ, but I also know that I will never advance to higher stages of purity staying in the safety bounds of naphtha I suppose, so I will have to try these methods as well and do different experiments. If it is possible to get pure to near pure with naphtha alone?, that is fine for me. My first two pulls were pure white, the rest pretty brown or even red/purple. Some say that they prefer the colored crystals over the pure white, so I suppose there are just so many variables. This process can be dirt simple, or it can get very complex and time consuming if I want. That is what I learned during my first extraction. But the same can be said for life in general anyway!....
 
I have a quick cactus extraction question:

I am doing a STB cactus extraction and have added my lye/water solution to my cactus powder and have just added the xylene as well. My next step will be adding the hcl to the pulled xylene but i need some help on how much to use. I have some 10% hcl from a lab that i will be using, and from the teks i have read somewhere between 3-6 drops of 33% muriatic acid is usually used in this step. What would be a good starting point? 5 drops? The main goal is to lower to a neutral ph if i'm not mistaken, however i don't have a ph meter at the moment.

Also, i am curious as to how much water solution i should use in this extraction? I found this link here that asked the same question but there weren't any difinitive answers (I am also doing the ekstaza tek, using 200 grams of san pedro powder). When i don't add enough, the solution is too thick and chunky but when i add alot more water i'm afraid all the mescaline will be sitting in the water and the xylene won't pick up much. Thanks for the help
 
Hello there,

Swim's in the midst of a first extraction, via vovins tek. After freezing 48hrs for the first yield, there were noticeable amounts of very white crystals on the bottom. Broke them loose, filtered, crystals melted into the filter paper. The filter paper feels rather.. starch; so Swim is wondering the best means of acquiring this back from the filter paper, if this is indeed where any lies; if this is even possible/plausible. Swim will be undergoing the 'pour off naptha, re-freeze upside down, fridge upside down' method for the rest, in case.

In addition, Swims ph meter was unable to fit in the sepratory funnel, and thus made ph testing a tad more tumultuous. Now checking the basified extracts (as Swim has saved every liquid from the process) he is getting a reading of around 10-11ph on all containers. Though Swim was seeming to get readings of 12 when draining some from the sep funnel to test. Could more lye solution be added to these extractions to raise the ph to 12-13 to try and acquire more spice? Could the naphtha Swim is freeze precipitating be used after further basification, even if it has the potential to be holding small amounts of spice, as is?

~ Xtramint
 
xtramint, just soak the filter in warm naphtha to retrieve your DMT again. Check the FAQ on freeze precipitation tips.

As for pH meter, thats entirely unnecessary, basify till its all black and add a bit more just for good measure, that should already be pH 13-14. I definitely recommend at least 13 if you are pulling with naphtha, so yeah, add more lye.

5th dimensional, 20 milligrams is indeed 0.02g
 
The strangest thing happened to me today, I re-crystallized yesterday according to the FAQ using naphtha, not my first time, and usually everything goes as planned, but this morning when I checked my batch the crystals were floating around in the naphtha instead of being stuck to the bottom of the glass, the crystals were definitely there, but floating and not stuck. I will use a coffee filter to filter them out, but what can be going on? Will they be OK I wonder?...
 
Yeah this can happen sometimes, maybe if you've been opening the freezer to check too often and the vibrations prevent it from sticking, or due to the crystallization for some reason a bit of air got trapped inside of it and it becomes too light, or its not cold enough, or depending on the shape/micro-texture of the freezing container it doesnt attach well, etc.. Crystallization is at the same time a mistery, a science, and an art. I love it :)

Nothing to worry. The faster you filter and the coldest it is, the less chance of crystals melting into the filter. Again not to worry, if it melts, just use a bit of warm naphtha to pick up again and freeze again. If nothing has been thrown away, nothing is lost.

Edit: oh yeah of course forgot what the next poster said, it may also have to do with saturation, if you evap some more and freeze again it can help it sticking.
 
For naphtha freeze precips. evapping the naphtha to the most dmt condensed solution you can will help it bond and stick as well, shouldnt be tooo much space for crystals to float around in, if it still doesnt work add it to another pull and evap them both down a lot before next freeze attempt.
 
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