1-possible, personally I never really noticed
2- well if your manske precipitation was properly done (enough salt was added), then yes all the harmalas should have precipitated as salt, and after separating them, when adding a base to the harmala-free liquid, these precipitated alkaloids should be only 'other' alkaloids.. (and no, harmalas wouldnt pass through a filter if you used a coffee filter). If you want just for the sake of it, you can redissolve these 'other' alkaloids in acidic water and saturate with salt again.. if nothing comes out then you are sure its not harmalas, but probably vasicine/vasicinone
-3 Yes it definitely gets clearer.. I spent last night cleaning up some rue extraction with MANY successive manskes and A/Bs.. Each time it gets clearer and clearer.. Final result is some off-white harmaline and some very light yellow harmine, quite nice
(I also separated them)
The trick is, when the alkaloids are dissolved in acidic water, filter this water properly, every time! In the first/second manske precpitation, after redissolving them, I filter with cotton plug and funnel, first time with a bit loose, second time more tightly packed plug. After the third manske, I filter in coffee filter and it doesnt take horribly long.
4- Yeah when I say freebasing I mean adding the base do the solution containing the harmalas and they precipitate as freebases. BTW, no need to use ammonia, it stinks badly (and not so easy to find food safe ammonia either, I guess). Use sodium carbonate instead (or first sodium bicarbonate to precipitate harmine and then carbonate to precipitate harmaline)
5- By A/Bs I guess what is meant is simply redissolving in acid water (then filtering again...) and then precipitating them again as freebases.. If im not mistaken, you might lose a little bit of harmaline every time you re-precipitate them as freebase, so better to repeat many times the manske and redissolving and filtering the acid solution for removing impurities many times, and do the freebase step twice or 3 times max, if possible...