Some issues with DMT extraction

[Psyckoz]

Hi,

SWIM felt he should create a thread about his extraction instead of posting too much in the help thread.
Today SWIM attempted his first DMT extraction. He broke into little pieces nearly 200g of MHRB and then put them in the blender 3 times.
He was left with some very litte bits and a lot of powder ( or almost powder ).
He then mixed 200ml of Lye ( SWIM used liquid lye, the one fo cleaning drains ) with 3000ml of tap water and after letting it cool down for a bit added the root bark.
He stirred it well and slow for 10-15 min until he was left with a black liquid with almost no pieces of root bark in it.
SWIM let the mixture sit for 45 to 50 min and then got a big jug and used a funel to transfer the basified water+MHRB into it.
He was a bit suprised to see that there were big chunks of wet root bark in the bottom of the recipient after he transfered the mixture to the jug.
SWIM then proceeded to add 200ml of naphta and stir and shake the mixture inside the jug for roughly 10 min. The layers separated very quickly but also appeared what SWIM felt like an issue : the naphta layer, even after shaking and stirring a lot and letting the liquid sit for 15 min, was very very small.
So SWIM decided to let it sit a bit more and then proceeded to pull the naphta top layer with a syringe. He was only able to pull something like 80-100ml from the 200ml of naphta he used. He poured his pull into a glass and then filtered it ( there were some very very small bits of root bark that came with the pull and SWIM wanted a perfectly clean liquid ) into another one.
He was left with 80-100ml of a slightly yellow substance he then covered and put in the freezer.
After almost 3h, no crystals had formed ( well this isn't really an issue, it takes time and it depends on the freezer power and setting ).

So SWIM wanted to know what you guys thought about all this ? Is the issue the shaking ? Or maybe the liquid lye ( SWIM got caustic soda for drain cleaning, it's a slightly green liquid but it seemed to be OK, reacted with the water as expected ) ?
SWIM has now left the place where the extraction was done and left the the stuff with a friend.
Before leaving he decided to pour 300ml of naphta this time ( instead of 200ml ) into the basified water + MHRB and leave it in a hot bath ( SWIM's friend is gonna very slowly stir the mixture every couple of hours, no shaking, and change the water if it cools down too much ).
With 300ml it formed a nice layer ( about 3 times the size of the 200ml one ) on top and looks good. SWIM is probably gonna try to pull that tomorrow but is waiting for some of your advice ^^

PS: SWIM took pics of the mixture with the 300ml naphta and also from the glass with the naphta pull in the freezer. He can upload them if anyone requests it.

 

[Infundibulum]

200ml of liquid lye says absolutely nothing about the amount of lye SWIY added in the mixture. Even though he's most certainly not underbasifying, he may not be basifying enough to perform the STB.

Another issue is naphtha. Heating the naphtha/basified sludge always tends to pull more spice. Some naphthas are so made (remember that naphtha is a generic term, there are possibly 100s of different naphthas) that some are good at pulling at room temperatures, other need to be heated to pull effectively. A person who writes a tek does not use the exact same materials with other people. This is especially crucial when it comes to such a generic material as naphtha.

A good pull (esp. with warm naphtha) should go cloudy within 3 hours of refrigeration. Stirring or shaking the naphtha/basified bark mixture has no negative impact on how well or bad the naphtha pull will be. Shaking just creates emulsions, that's all.

And patience is a virtue. Waiting till the morning for the precipitations to occur in the fridge is not a big issue. And if there's any spice in the bark it will still be there for weeks to come. It may take someone some good time to work out how to do it properly, but nothing is lost!

 

[Psyckoz]

200ml of liquid lye says absolutely nothing about the amount of lye SWIY added in the mixture. Even though he's most certainly not underbasifying, he may not be basifying enough to perform the STB.

Another issue is naphtha. Heating the naphtha/basified sludge always tends to pull more spice. Some naphthas are so made (remember that naphtha is a generic term, there are possibly 100s of different naphthas) that some are good at pulling at room temperatures, other need to be heated to pull effectively. A person who writes a tek does not use the exact same materials with other people. This is especially crucial when it comes to such a generic material as naphtha.

A good pull (esp. with warm naphtha) should go cloudy within 3 hours of refrigeration. Stirring or shaking the naphtha/basified bark mixture has no negative impact on how well or bad the naphtha pull will be. Shaking just creates emulsions, that's all.

And patience is a virtue. Waiting till the morning for the precipitations to occur in the fridge is not a big issue. And if there's any spice in the bark it will still be there for weeks to come. It may take someone some good time to work out how to do it properly, but nothing is lost!

First thanks for taking the time to answer my questions

Well SWIM read that he should add 1g of lye per gram of MHRB and since 1g = 1ml, SWIM added 200ml of lye because he used 200g of rootbark.
As for the naphta, yes SWIM thought about that ( the fact that he doesn't live in the US and doesn't have access to the same naphta as most made him think that his naphta may react differently ). The first pull was done without any heat and now SWIM's gonna do one with the basified water+MHRB having sit for hours in a hot bath ( I guess that's the only way to know which one works better ).
Also waiting until tomorrow morning or afternoon ( it's almost 10PM here ) for the precipitation to form may give SWIM some more clues.
Anyways it's always good to know that shaking doesn't have any effect on the final product and that you can keep the solution for weeks.
SWIM will wait to maybe change the lye and/or get PH paper to verify if he's basifying enough until after he's seen the results of the precipitation and tried pulling heating the solution.

 

[Trips]

Lye is a powder, flakes, chunks or pearly things: Pure Sodium Hydroxide 1 ml drain cleaner does not equal 1 gram. There might only be like 0.3 grams of lye per ml of solution.

 

[Psyckoz]

Lye is a powder, flakes, chunks or pearly things: Pure Sodium Hydroxide 1 ml drain cleaner does not equal 1 gram. There might only be like 0.3 grams of lye per ml of solution.

Oh. SWIM is starting to understand why it might have not had what he expected.
If ( let's be hypothetical ) that's the problem and SWIM get 100% NaoH, what should he do with the already basified water water + MHRB ?
Add just a little bit of of the 100% lye to get to the amount needed ( if drain cleaning lye has 0.3g/ml and SWIM needs 200g lye in total, that means he only has now 60g of lye in his basified water ) ?
Or is it impossible to do that now and SWIM has to start over ( he really wouldn't like this option ) ?

 

[Infundibulum]

SWIY does not know how much lye is in his drain cleaner, neither has a way of finding out easily unless the concentration is stated in the bottle. One can always try to titrate the drain cleaned and try to calculate how much acid is needed to neutralise this lye solution. This may be a bit complicated however.

On the other hand, 0.3glye/ml water is insanely too much for an estimate! Lye would not possibly dissolve in such an amount of water. My guess is that the drain cleaner would contain anything between 0.004 to 0.04g of lye per ml of liquid. This would be a more reasonable lye content for use in a domestic setting.

In which case... SWIY might have underbasified. 200ml of the household liquid lye used may actually contain from 0.8 to 8g of lye. This is a piece of crap, especially if diluted in 3000ml of water+bark.

 

[Psyckoz]

SWIY does not know how much lye is in his drain cleaner, neither has a way of finding out easily unless the concentration is stated in the bottle. One can always try to titrate the drain cleaned and try to calculate how much acid is needed to neutralise this lye solution. This may be a bit complicated however.

On the other hand, 0.3glye/ml water is insanely too much for an estimate! Lye would not possibly dissolve in such an amount of water. My guess is that the drain cleaner would contain anything between 0.004 to 0.04g of lye per ml of liquid. This would be a more reasonable lye content for use in a domestic setting.

In which case... SWIY might have underbasified. 200ml of the household liquid lye used may actually contain from 0.8 to 8g of lye. This is a piece of crap, especially if diluted in 3000ml of water+bark.

So SWIM should get 100% Lye in solid form ( not the household thing ) and add it to the solution to basify it correctly I guess.
SWIM actually figured the problem could be the lye also because he got a few drops on his skin ( after it was mixed with water, bark and naphta ), in the little space between the end of the sleeve and the beginning of the glove and it didn't do anything. No burning, no heat, no pain, nothing.
SWIM's concern now would be to know if something can still be extracted from that underbasified solution ( he has one glass in the freezer and naphta in the jug, both waiting for him ) or if he won't get anything and should just redo the basification with proper lye and then reuse both naphta on that new mixture.

 

[Infundibulum]

Yup. It is also a common test among kitchen chemists who do not have pH meter to try the pH by dipping their finger in the basic solution; If the finger comes out with the bone exposed shining bright white and bleached then one has basified enough for STB.

 

[Psyckoz]

SWIM kinda likes his finger, he wouldn't do that to him ;p
And SWIM wouldn't call himself a chemist, not even a kitchen one ( this thread is proof of that ).
And he's probably not going to get anything from this until he redoes the basification, SWIM's friend told him that the glass in the freezer isn't even cloudy after 7h30 hours.

 

[Psyckoz]

Update :

SWIM bought lye in solid form ( little pearls ) and basified the solution correctly this time.
He then proceeded to shake it slowly after adding 250 ml of naphta and put it in a hot water bath for ~30min.
The naphta was then extracted and put into a small glass container with a lid.
It was left sitting in the freezer for 4h ( at -25C° ) and then the naphta was poured off and the cristals left to dry and then scraped off the glass.
SWIM put another pull of naphta in the freezer while he was gathering the cristals and sleeping and took it out after 10h.
After scraping off everything, SWIM was left with a nice little amount of very yellow spice.
He tried to weight it but couldn't get any results he could trust( the balance is for grams, it's really not reliable ).
If the balance is somewhat right though, SWIM has something like 600-700mg of spice.
He also tried smoking a small amount ( something the size of a pinky nail ) in a light-bulb vaporiser but it didn't do anything.
SWIM felt the harsh smoke, the plastic taste and a little burning but absolutely no effects.
He tried again with a bigger dose ( 1.5 times what he did previously ) and again, nothing happened.
SWIM is gonna take some pics of the spice and probably do a recrystalization ( he'll also be doing the remaining naphta pulls when he can ).
But is it normal that a dose, even low, would have absolutely no effects on SWIM ( he didn't cough, he took everything in 1 or 2 lungfuls ) ?

 

[Psyckoz]

Ok so SWIM doesn't want to be wasting more Spice and decided to send me this pic :

Spice Pic


He's sorry for the horrible quality but that's the best his phone can do.
If someone could try to guess how much Spice is in there/tell SWIM what a 20-25mg would be like, he would really appreciate.

PS : the DMT is very powdery if that helps

 

[Infundibulum]

Ok so SWIM doesn't want to be wasting more Spice and decided to send me this pic :

Spice Pic


He's sorry for the horrible quality but that's the best his phone can do.
If someone could try to guess how much Spice is in there/tell SWIM what a 20-25mg would be like, he would really appreciate.

PS : the DMT is very powdery if that helps

Spice looks fine. SWIY may have to work on his smoking technique. Basically, smoke as much as possible as fast as possible. SWIM hates lightbulb vaporisers for making everything too harsh. tell your friend to use a waterbong and get a scale to weight it properly.

 

[Faust]

I see your pictured spice product just fine, you should consider doing a recrystallization or 3 to get rid of that harsh smoke, the burning of the lips and throat is due to an excess of lye in the product.

Using a shot glass and 70ml of Naphtha per 1 gram total of spice. Adjust amounts to fit your yield of product.

It is easy, quick, and fun~! To recrystallize you simple dissolve the spice in a shot glass filled with hot naphtha; which is all heated by a dish of hot tap water. You stir it up until the clear naptha turns yellow and no more spice is left at the bottom. Just a little black pellet or specs and splinters of black, this pellet of "sludge" should be left at the bottom while the rest of the spice-laden naphtha is poured off the top or siphoned off from the shot glass.

Then you freeze precipitate as normal or do a [3hr fridge (then swirl)/6hr freezer (then swirl)/ 30 minutes on the counter (then swirl and repeat 3hr fridge] this will yield larger thicker finally formed DMT crystals that clink around in their jar.

 

[Psyckoz]

Thanks, SWIM has already thought about doing a recrystalization but he can't get his hand on a mg scale =/
So that'll have to wait.
That's why he was asking if it was possible to know roughly how much spice was in that pic and also what a 20-25mg dose would look like ( that's why SWIM used a match, to compare ^^ ).
But seems like it's impossible to give an estimate ( and the pic is really crappy anyways ). So SWIM's new quest is to find a mg scale.
He also has another question : to facilitate the pulls, SWIM used more naphta than he's supposed to.
He wants to evaporate some of it ( or maybe all of it, since he can't use the freezer at his house and has to wait to go to a friend's house ) and wanted to know if it's ok to let the glass with the naphta ( with something like a cd or coaster on top ) outside.
The reason SWIM asks is because it's been very cold lately ( right now it's 4°C, but at night it can go down to 0°,-1° ) and he fears the temperature can affect the naphta.

 

[Faust]

Yes, I saw your match and it intrigued as to what you were trying to do?

I know the laymans scale of doses goes something like this;

A paper/carboard match head is roughly 20mg (~threshold dose)
A wooden kitchen match [pictured] head is roughly 30mg (~medium dose)
A number 2 pencil eraser head [fresh, red/pink part and unusued] is roughly 60mg (~full-hyperspace dose)

Note: SWIM does not recommend the full hyperspace dose when measuring this way. It is much better to be sure measuring this dose by using a 0.00 g scale. Security Measure

SWIM recommends; the AMW-55 or AMW-100 for their professional and sleek scientific looks 8)

Also, you can measure out 700mg of spice... 500mg or 300mg of spice by putting it on a digital 0.0g regular grams digital scale and reading the 0.7g of spice... 0.5g or 0.3g for recrystallization :lol: :shock: :d .