StrangeLoop
Rising Star
OK so this is extremely frustrating and has never happened before. I set out yesterday to do Whatcha's tek which has worked beautifully many times in the past. First odd thing was that mixing the lye never really made the water heat up excessively. There was some heat but not as much it seems. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my results. After making my basic water I added the root bark to each jug and shook vigorously. Immediately a few things are noticed.
1) The water normally turns a murky brown muddy color when I mix the bark in. This time the water was purple. Now I know it's sold as a "purple dye" but I always thought that was strange since the water never before turned purple as it did this time.
2) FOAM...there was a TON of foamy frothy bubbles that developed after shaking that took a long time to settle out. Never seen that happen before.
3) Layers. Other than the foam previously mentioned which settles out after a while, there are layers in the basic solution. The bottom layer is bright purple and by appearance looks to contain most of the bark. It can be kicked up into the middle layer, which looks most "correct" as a kind of dark opaque brown, by gently agitating the jug, but this mostly settles back down into the bottom layer. The topmost layer looks the same as this bottom layer.
Despite this I attempted to pull, but four naphtha pulls yielded absolutely nothing from freeze precipitation overnight. I didn't expect it to either, the naphtha was absolutely clear instead of the normally yellow or orange. All variables are pretty much the exact same, the brand of lye is the same and I've used bark from the same vendor previously, although this bark was purchased a month or two ago and I basically just shelved it. I've used hot water in the sink as heat baths to try to help. I'm about to boil a pot of water and use it as a heat bath to hopefully help dissolve the bark further and maybe make this thing still work.
I'm open to any ideas or suggestions, at the moment I've got two jugs filled with a pound of lye and a pound of bark each (would hate for it to be a waste!) and a tiny bit of naphtha floating on top. Anyone had anything like this happen before?
1) The water normally turns a murky brown muddy color when I mix the bark in. This time the water was purple. Now I know it's sold as a "purple dye" but I always thought that was strange since the water never before turned purple as it did this time.
2) FOAM...there was a TON of foamy frothy bubbles that developed after shaking that took a long time to settle out. Never seen that happen before.
3) Layers. Other than the foam previously mentioned which settles out after a while, there are layers in the basic solution. The bottom layer is bright purple and by appearance looks to contain most of the bark. It can be kicked up into the middle layer, which looks most "correct" as a kind of dark opaque brown, by gently agitating the jug, but this mostly settles back down into the bottom layer. The topmost layer looks the same as this bottom layer.
Despite this I attempted to pull, but four naphtha pulls yielded absolutely nothing from freeze precipitation overnight. I didn't expect it to either, the naphtha was absolutely clear instead of the normally yellow or orange. All variables are pretty much the exact same, the brand of lye is the same and I've used bark from the same vendor previously, although this bark was purchased a month or two ago and I basically just shelved it. I've used hot water in the sink as heat baths to try to help. I'm about to boil a pot of water and use it as a heat bath to hopefully help dissolve the bark further and maybe make this thing still work.
I'm open to any ideas or suggestions, at the moment I've got two jugs filled with a pound of lye and a pound of bark each (would hate for it to be a waste!) and a tiny bit of naphtha floating on top. Anyone had anything like this happen before?
