SWIM's never tried q21q21's tek, nor sunflower oil, but sorry for the disappointment.
Extraction:
SWIM went ahead with a rather shoddy experiment recently: Having attained shredded MHRB--rather than pre-powdered, as he had been using for these particular experiments--and having burnt out his blender from rather foolish behavior in prior experiments, he went ahead and gave the shredded a nice acid bath, as it was. He also happened to have run low on lime, and decided to have some fun; having only about a quarter of a cup of lime, he brought it up to just over a half what he had left of prepared sodium carbonate and topped it off with a bit of bicarbonate to ~1 cup. He distributed this evenly between two halves of a 200+g extraction, neutralizing the acetic acid, then stirring and adding a bit of water. He then proceeded to submerge the basified mixture in as little soy bean oil as necessary to not have any shreds uncovered. It became a bit tricky to decant, as shredded bark and sodium carb/bicarb do not absorb water particularly well; needless to say, he had to do a bit of work to get that separated.
Salting:
He then went ahead his more theoretical (less shoddy) experiments by salting with dilute vinegar (at least 1:5 distilled white vinegar to tap water), shaking vigorously for an extended amount of time but no more than five minutes, tops. As per usual, he popped the HDPE jug of the unseparated oil/vinegar mixture in the freezer over night. The oil did freeze into a gel-like slush, but the polar layer containing the dissolved salts froze into a solid chunk. He shook it up a bit, and while the solid polar chunk remained undisturbed, the oil slush broke up quite easily. He squeezed the oil out like shampoo, shaking it a bit more now and again. A bit had been left over, so he added a tiny bit of limonene and a dash of 90% IPA, shook it (this was all quick enough that the ice chunk was still solid and intact), and poured it out into a designated container.
Crystallization:
To remove the polar layer for evaporation (in a food dehydrator), he gave the jug a hot water bath until thawed, then poured it into a gravy separator. A bit more oil was present, so he poured out the water layer into a dish, leaving the oil behind. He evaporated the vinegar/acetate solution at 68C for a day until there were only oil droplets and acetate resin. The oil droplets were removed with a quick dash and decant of IPA, leaving the acetate resin undisturbed and apparently undissolved (no loss could be seen), and he left it in a dry place for a short while to ensure all solvents (oil and IPA) had been removed. He did some partial manual-crystallization-style scraping and smearing and popped it back into the dehydrator for a short time. He repeated the process a few times before proceeding to full manual-crystallization and beyond.
Results:
A few observations he had during the scraping, smearing, dehydrating process were fairly interesting: Immediately after the IPA wash of the precipitates, the simultaneous odor of acetic acid mingled with freebase could be detected, which made sense due the extended dehydrating from initial evap. Each time he repeated the scrape/smear between stints in the dehydrator, the smell of acetic would subside as the precipitates cooled while the odor of freebase became more prevalent. To SWIM's mind this is a very good indicator for confirming the heat-dissociation theory regarding the acetates; that and the simple fact that while mixture came out quite gooey, it was able to solidify more and more as the process was repeated.
A super hard, dark resin ball was obtained, and seemed a bit sketchy though the product was quite pungent with the goodies. SWIM then proceeded with further experimentation by mixing up a saturated solution of newly prepared sodium carbonate. Hed would then add it dropwise to the resin ball, flattening it with a spatula while doing so, being careful not to add an abundance of water that could carry away droplets of product in suspension. He then proceeded with manual crystallization, yet again in an attempt to attain solid chunks of product, carefully washing away salts and base with cold water, but he could only achieve a soft, slightly sticky ball with an odd coloration.
Despite his concerns, it proved quite active, despite the apparent impurities. He loaded 36mg into a screen shaped into a sort of cone which he had zeroed the scale to prior to loading. He popped this into his smoking device (The Inspirator mkII), which had been thoroughly cleaned to remove any possible leftovers, melted it a bit by feather with the torch, then went ahead and hit it with the intent of getting it all in one toke. The result was definitely a breakthrough, though not as strong as he's come to expect.
Conclusions:
SWIM suspects a number of possible contributing factors may have led to the resulting impurities (causing discoloration and softness). Firstly, the lack of an adequate amount of lime, secondly, the excessive liquid in basification (also partly due to the lack of lime, possibly also the usage of shredded MHRB instead of PP), thirdly, an IPA wash between each session of the acetate precipitates in the dehydrator may have helped, and lastly, the use of sodium carbonate solution in freebase conversion may have been unnecessary to supplement the heat dissociation (as it turned rather difficult).
Overall, SWIM is rather surprised at just how wide the thresh-hold for error really is. Despite his worst efforts and strange results, he still achieved a rather smokable product. And it would seem simplification would have been the best way to have improved the quality of the yield.... He also made the time to test the Inspirator with a heating element devoid of ceramic fiber (rolled up steel screens only) with success, albeit a tad bit more demanding of skill with handling the torch; it'll be elaborated upon further in the appropriate thread.
It should work just as stated, fumarates dissolved in water, mix saturated sodium carb solution and into the fridge for 3 or so days.