Simple Acacia tek

[KloudQ7]

You should never add water to lye like that, always do it the other way around dissolve solids into water slowly.

 

[acacian]

You should never add water to lye like that, always do it the other way around dissolve solids into water slowly.

the tek says to add it slowly to spring water?

 

[downwardsfromzero]

You should never add water to lye like that, always do it the other way around dissolve solids into water slowly.

the tek says to add it slowly to spring water?

The wording is such that if you overlook the small word 'to', it could be misinterpreted in a dangerous way:-

In a Pyrex cup take 35gm (about 4 teaspoons) of Caustic Soda (98 percent Sodium
Hydroxide) and slowly add to 100ml of spring water

Gotta be careful when phrasing methods like this!

 

[JefFlux]

You should never add water to lye like that, always do it the other way around dissolve solids into water slowly.

Good point about making that step unambiguously clear since it’s designed for beginners

 

[JefFlux]

Do you find that using shellite now that more often than not small droplets of a watery substance precipitate out and at the end they will sit there as water blobs in the final extract? Even using a clean tree like narrow phyllode acuminata has behaved this way.. makes me not want to use shellite anymore .. I wish I could pinpoint the problem!

Unfortunately around here there is no good toluene which is my preferred solvent. Back to xylene I guess

Great to see this being asked here as it had stumped me for a while too - I have come to the tentative conclusion that it is humidity from the environment precipitating our in the plate as it only seems to happen on warm days and more so when there is a fan involved. One solution for this is to scrape it all up anyway and use a tissue to dab up any watery blobs from the results - as the water content lessens the gooey results will start to harden.

Although Shellite has varied a lot over the years, I think a side by side with industrial grade Shellite will be worth it as they are not much different in price.