some basic questions before my first extraction [EDIT] [complete]

[The_Embalmer]

so i plan to do an STB tek with some salt added into the mix


i plan to be using a karter boro glass 1l media bottle to make my soup and do my pulls from, i have a seperate 500ml boro media bottle i plan to mix my lye/salt water solution in after it has cooled to room temperature and then mix over the next 24 hours before adding solvent. I plan to water wash and have a 100ml boro graduated cylinder i plan to do for this. I also bought PTFE sheeting so i could place under the cap of the media bottle's.

the procedure i have planned in a nutshell is as follows:

100g of bark with about 650ml distilled water in a 1l media bottle, then mix 250ml distilled water with about 30g lye and 10g non ionized salt making sure to pour the lye slowly into the water, in a 500ml media bottle. Let the lye solution cool down for a couple hours to room temp then add to MHRB water, and mix well let that sit for 24 hours then add 75-100ml NPS (see nps question below still a little confused on how 75-100ml will compare in the width of the media bottle vs the 1l flasks). Mix that up 4-5 times throughout the day then once it's seperated after the last mix, do your first pull, water wash it, freeze percip 18-24 hours pour off excess NPS back into soup jug and repeat for 2ish more pulls


list of materials as follows and recipe for now:


equipment:
10ml glass pipette (boro)
1l media bottle (boro)
500ml media bottle (boro)
100ml grad cynlinder (boro)
100ml 4x4" glass funnel (boro)
glass stir rods 16" 12" and 9" (boro)


planned recipe:
900ml distilled water (initially going to be divided into 2 containers at the start 650ml/250ml
100g of powdered MHRB
30g lye
10g salt
100ml naptha (or would 75ml still be fine in the width of the media bottle over the erlenmyere? just wondering you probably dont want too thin of a layer of naptha to pull from but obviously dont want too much naptha, any insight on how many ml of naptha to use for 1l media bottle would be great as i have not been able to do this yet, everything should be arriving by next week)




one of the main questions i still have has to do with the initial exothermic reaction of the basic solution in the 500ml media bottle, i am assuming you dont want to cover the lye water mix when it is cooling down? just leave that one open to vent because there is an exothermic reaction taking place and that could cause pressure to build?

when adding the solution to your main soup jug, do you also leave this open to vent while it is sitting for the next 24 hours? do you leave the lid on loosely? is it screwed on tight? is it just the exothermic reaction in the initial mix of the basic solution that is the only concern?


thank you all for listening to my questions! hope you are all having a wonderful day





Edit: nevermind! Looked a little more through the forums and found the answers I was looking for. My apologies for being a bit impatient. I could've easily answered my own basic questions and did with a couple more searches and going through the faq.

 

[pantostao]

Once the lye is fully dissolved in water, the exothermic reaction has ended. You can mix the basic solution and the soup, It will be fine. You can even skip this step and dissolve the lye directly in your MHRB soup, but that can degrade the DMT if the reaction gets too too hot. (And it's more dangerous, so it's better to mix the two separately).

About the NPS amount, the less, the better, so you don't have problems with the freeze precipitation step.

If you're starting with 100g of MHRB, you can reasonably assume that there are about 2g of DMT in there. Taking into acount the solubility of naphtha ( Chemical Guide to classic Psychedelics (DMT, 5-MeO-", Mescaline, Harmalas, Salvinorin A, ...) - Advanced/Enhanced chemistry - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus , Post nº 2 ), it looks like 70ml of 20ºC naphtha are enough to get it all.

You won't get it all on your first pull. So you can try, for example, performing 3 or 4 pulls with 50ml each. You can use more than that, just don't be silly like my friend that likes to use 500ml per pull and then he needs to evaporate it before freezing because the spice doesn't precipitate.

Don't worry, you're doing fine. It's nice to see people using boro and PTFE instead of any container. Just do it, you'll find that it's pretty easy to understand.

BTW, don't get discouraged if you don't end up with 2g of spice, that's an optimistic estimation. If you get over 1%, that's good. Just keep pulling if you feel like there's more DMT in the soup (ie, if your last pull still yields a sizeable amount, just do another one, and another one, and another one until the yield is not worth it)

 

[Blind_Goat]

The_Embalmer
I really like Chris Cantelmo (

) approach.
DMT extraction is generally bucket chemistry, and safety is generally more important than quantities etc.

Probably this will not be your best extraction and you will learn how to adapt if anything wrong shows up (emulsion, low PH, high fat etc)

I just recommend to do a heptane recristalization. It really helps to improve the final quality of your DMT.

Relax, safety first and practice. It will be ok.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Edit: nevermind! Looked a little more through the forums and found the answers I was looking for. My apologies for being a bit impatient. I could've easily answered my own basic questions and did with a couple more searches and going through the faq.

Welcome and congratulations on your rapid promotion. Newcomers take note - it is this type of attitude that tends to gain support :thumb_up:

The "exothermic reaction" you were concerned about is simply the hydration energy of solid sodium hydroxide. Once it has all dissolved there is no more heat output. Adding warm caustic soda to the bark sludge is fine or even desirable since warm base soup provides better yields. DMT freebase is more soluble in warmer naphtha, although it tends to lead to a more yellow-colored product.

PS - Would you happen to be a fan of the unsurpassable movie, "Withnail and I"?

 

[The_Embalmer]

Once the lye is fully dissolved in water, the exothermic reaction has ended. You can mix the basic solution and the soup, It will be fine. You can even skip this step and dissolve the lye directly in your MHRB soup, but that can degrade the DMT if the reaction gets too too hot. (And it's more dangerous, so it's better to mix the two separately).

About the NPS amount, the less, the better, so you don't have problems with the freeze precipitation step.

If you're starting with 100g of MHRB, you can reasonably assume that there are about 2g of DMT in there. Taking into acount the solubility of naphtha ( Chemical Guide to classic Psychedelics (DMT, 5-MeO-", Mescaline, Harmalas, Salvinorin A, ...) - Advanced/Enhanced chemistry - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus , Post nº 2 ), it looks like 70ml of 20ºC naphtha are enough to get it all.

You won't get it all on your first pull. So you can try, for example, performing 3 or 4 pulls with 50ml each. You can use more than that, just don't be silly like my friend that likes to use 500ml per pull and then he needs to evaporate it before freezing because the spice doesn't precipitate.

Don't worry, you're doing fine. It's nice to see people using boro and PTFE instead of any container. Just do it, you'll find that it's pretty easy to understand.

BTW, don't get discouraged if you don't end up with 2g of spice, that's an optimistic estimation. If you get over 1%, that's good. Just keep pulling if you feel like there's more DMT in the soup (ie, if your last pull still yields a sizeable amount, just do another one, and another one, and another one until the yield is not worth it)

thank you for the words of encouragement it is deeply appreciated! i will post back a picture of my first results. this will be fun and i am excited

The_Embalmer
I really like Chris Cantelmo (

) approach.
DMT extraction is generally bucket chemistry, and safety is generally more important than quantities etc.

Probably this will not be your best extraction and you will learn how to adapt if anything wrong shows up (emulsion, low PH, high fat etc)

I just recommend to do a heptane recristalization. It really helps to improve the final quality of your DMT.

Relax, safety first and practice. It will be ok.

the chris cantelmo video certainly cleared things up quite a bit actually i really liked the way he was able to explain things and kind of help calm the mind down about the whole process. I am a bit of a visual learner and its true, its amazing how much we can overcomplicate the most basic of things. our minds our quite hilarious sometimes. It is sad to hear about what happened though about him. brilliant mind and a big heart it seems.

Edit: nevermind! Looked a little more through the forums and found the answers I was looking for. My apologies for being a bit impatient. I could've easily answered my own basic questions and did with a couple more searches and going through the faq.

Welcome and congratulations on your rapid promotion. Newcomers take note - it is this type of attitude that tends to gain support :thumb_up:

The "exothermic reaction" you were concerned about is simply the hydration energy of solid sodium hydroxide. Once it has all dissolved there is no more heat output. Adding warm caustic soda to the bark sludge is fine or even desirable since warm base soup provides better yields. DMT freebase is more soluble in warmer naphtha, although it tends to lead to a more yellow-colored product.

PS - Would you happen to be a fan of the unsurpassable movie, "Withnail and I"?

Thank you both for clearing up the exothermic process after doing some research around reading back through these posts i am completely confident in the process now. I definitely was focusing too much on materials and trying to produce the best overall product when i havent even gotten my hands in the dirt with it yet. Thank you for the perspective you have helped me gain.



Yeah and from everything ive read around now yellow DMT it doesnt ultimately really seem to matter and seems to be more of a preference as long as the end product is clean. I notice the argument seems to lye between polymers and oils from different solubilities due to different temperatures, is it possible its a combination of both? I think i was overthinking this whole thing a bit much, but i tend to do that when i get excited about a project. Ill be happy with whatever end product to be perfectly honest, i am pretty excited about learning the process.


i have not seen the movie with nail and i but i plan to try and find a way to watch it here in the next couple days and will report back, seems like a pretty fun movie.


well all of my supplies are here, i plan to go get started tomorrow!

thank you all once again so much!

 

[The_Embalmer]

[Edit] somehow made the same post twice whoops

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Well, here's the choice clip that your nick inescapably reminded me of:
[youtube]

A truly great movie, highly recommended.

 

[The_Embalmer]

What a truly wild and strange coincidence. This is completely a character I'd normally find hilarious and a film I'd actually enjoy.

"No need to insult me, I was leavin anyway." :lol:

That line cracked me up


I am honestly incredibly honored. I was thinking more of the art and science of preserving human remains by treating them to forestall decomposition but I enjoy this clip too and got a good laugh for the morning. What a good way to start the day.


I look forward to checking out the movie and I hope you are all having a marvelous day or night wherever you are

 

[The_Embalmer]

Well sadly I went to pull out my dishes this morning and there were no crystals forming.


When I went to go do the pulls i used 100ml of naptha for each small dish so maybe too much naptha? It was left in the freezer for 12 hours could it have gone longer?


I went ahead and evaporated some of the naptha off and placed back in the freezer. Also curious about water washing. I went ahead and water washed using distilled warm salt water when i was doing my pulls. I wasn't paying attention when I first went to water wash and it was a bit hot like 90 degrees and my last pull was done basically water washing at room temp. Why I'm confused is the initial naptha solution had cloudiness to it but then when doing a water wash it seemed like the water became cloudy and the naptha became clear. I thought maybe this was just impurities but the more I think about it the more that might have been DMT but how could this make sense due to DMT being insoluble in water?

Just curious what anyone else's take is on what I could've done wrong? Is water washing recommended even? From what I have read it seems to be recommended and that you will lose a small percentage of yield to it but not your entire yield?


I was an idiot in not paying attention and didn't pour the water wash back into the soup jug so I feel if that was the problem I probably ruined my first batch of bark.


I know that it shouldn't be my source of bark they seem to be a pretty reliable source.



After evaporating some I did start to see some oil beads of some kind forming on the bottom of the dish and there was somewhat of a milkyway swirl faded in the solution so I'm not sure maybe I just didn't leave it in the freezer long enough?

I have read through the forums on this and this part of the process while simple still confuses me the most.

I notice Chris doesn't do a water wash in his video how necessary are those?



Is that even where I went wrong?


I used

100g of bark
50g of lye
10g of salt
100ml naptha


I added naptha to jug and spun from bottom to top slowly making sure all naptha coated bark and did this about 4-5 letting it sperate each time then on last time separating siphoned off using a pipette to water washing in roughly 30-50ml of warm salt water then into small Pyrex dish. I definitely noticed I think I was using too much naptha right off the bat and when I checked the dishes it was 12 hours later. When first opening the dish I could see the smallest specks of some kind of crystals forming but everything went back to clear beads as it got back to room temp.


While evaporating some of the naptha off I noticed more of these clear beads of what looked like oil forming down on the bottom of the Pyrex. Could this possibly be dmt?





Thank you all and hope you are having a wonderful day. I hate to be asking so many questions I know this is a common one but I'm not really finding too many answers right now on what I'm exactly confused about or if someone has a link to some info to point me in the right direction about this that would be amazing.



(Again found I could just look all this up with enough time. Everything is in the forums that is mentioned and asked in a question here. I was once again being impatient.)

 

[Blind_Goat]

It happened to me just like happened to you in my first extractions. I had to improve my technique to get a success. Here are some things I improved

A few things to remember:
1. Water is important, make sure that your MHRB+Lye is in a tomato sauce consistency. If it is very solid like cement, it will be very difficult to extract.(maybe you'll have to add water, since it evaporated in lye hydration)
2. If the acidification is too intense it's possible that it makes the work of lye more difficult. Less is more.
3. Too much Naphta is bad, because it will be difficult to saturate it
4. Is your freezer potent enough? I use a -26ºC (-14,8ºF) the colder, the better.
5. I really recomend doing a A/B tek, because it will save you good Naphta.
6. Is your Naphta good/pure? Many people use lighter fluid (which has querosene) I like to use lab grade Naphta, it is purer and as I always do A/B tek I don't loose much of it (kinda expensive)
7. Mix in the jar while it is still hot, but AVOID EMULSIONS at all costs.

Can you take pictures of your used Naphta?

 

[The_Embalmer]

1. Consistency was good according to everything I read. I'm not sure it was that, definitely a tomato sauce consistency if not more soupy even. Wasn't too thick by any means.


2. I'll try 30g lye next time, I had heard that the teks call for too much lye and it doesn't take much at all to raise it to the correct PH. I did let the soup sit for 24 hours before doing my extract was that not necessary? Also ambient Temps in my room have been on the colder side downin the lower 60s could soup be too cold?



3. This definitely happened. I am aware now why people call for less naptha. It was very
last minute of me to change my formula to 100ml of nps and 50g of lye. I was originally gonna use 75ml and 30g of lye but it seems like 75ml is even a bit top. When pulling it out of the freezer the dishes I chose were small and about 100ml of water per dish.


4. I'm pretty sure it is, would it be better to use a cooler with salted ice? I guess I will try and figure out the freezer situation. It seems cold enough. I have a lazer therm is that sufficient enough to test temp?


5. I will try to at some point, might do it next extraction.


6. Mix the naptha in when still hot? The lye water? Which am I mixing in still hot or what am I heating? I did everything at room temperature pretty much cause from what i understood this carried the least amount of fats over. The only time I heated something was heating water and salt in the microwave.





The naptha I've been using is from lab alley and seems pure. Left a good evap test.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions I really appreciate it!

 

[Blind_Goat]

2. I'll try 30g lye next time, I had heard that the teks call for too much lye and it doesn't take much at all to raise it to the correct PH. I did let the soup sit for 24 hours before doing my extract was that not necessary? Also ambient Temps in my room have been on the colder side downin the lower 60s could soup be too cold?

It isn't necessary to let the MHRB+lye sit for 24h with naphta, just do the cycle of shaking and let it sit 4 or 5 times. The idea is to freeze the first pull of naphta while still hot from the exotermical reaction from lye hydration (a hotter solvent disolves better). While the first batch of naphta is in the freezer, now you can do the 24h period: let some more naphta sit in the MHRB+lye until the DMT precipitates in the freezer. Cycle the 2 doses of Naphta in pulling DMT from the mix and the other precipitating. By doing it you will make sure Naphta is always working for you.


I recommend always (before you do the jar shaking) heat the solution to improve solubility of Naphta.

Too much lye will not harm your extraction, but too much acid (vinegar, for example) will make it difficult to basify the MHRB.

2.4. I'm pretty sure it is, would it be better to use a cooler with salted ice? I guess I will try and figure out the freezer situation. It seems cold enough. I have a lazer therm is that sufficient enough to test temp?

No, just make sure your temp is ok. Do not exaggerate the work/methods.

6. Mix the naptha in when still hot? The lye water? Which am I mixing in still hot or what am I heating? I did everything at room temperature pretty much cause from what i understood this carried the least amount of fats over. The only time I heated something was heating water and salt in the microwave.

Heat the MHRB+lye in a hot water bath without the Naphta. After reaching the maximum temperature (boiling water) leave for a few moments for the pots with the MHRB+lye to heat up. Just then add Naphta. This way you will avoid losing solvent.

And yes... mix the naphta with MHRB+lye while still hot.

Remember: open the jars from time to time so they don't explode and hurt you.

Keep vinegar available so that if any inconvenience occurs (lye splashes on your hands, for example) you can quickly wash your hands with vinegar (neutralize the base) and avoid further problems.

Don't mind the fat at this point. You have to learn how to extract it first... if a lot of fat comes out, simply recrystallize it with heptane.

The photo I requested was of the used Naphta (I want to see it's color and general aspect), not the new and unused Naphta in the jar. You kept it...right? (Always keep used Naphta as it already has DMT. You'll just saturate it even more)
You'll probably lose a lot of solvent because you did STB method.

Keep practicing and studying the process, you'll nail it.
Draw a timeline of the general process, it will help you to learn it.
Be careful with high dosages. Use with awareness and intelligence. Keep low profile.

 

[The_Embalmer]

Thank you Blind goat!

 

[Blind_Goat]

Thank you Blind goat!

Sure! Just returning the guidance many members here gave and give me.
Please, Let us know when you are successful in your efforts.

 

[The_Embalmer]

Well once i soaked the whole jug of base soup in heat after adding the naptha then waited for it to cool to room temp and then pulled i got this. Also combined all the pulls into one dish .

So first extract complete!

Thank you to the nexus and everyone who contributed knowledge to be able to keep the spirit of this medicine alive!
Hope everyone is having a blessed day or night

 

[Blind_Goat]

Awesome! Very clean extraction. Almost no fat. Store the Naphta you used for further extractions! It has more DMT in it, for sure.
Time to fly.