Hello all,

this is my first post. I kind of ran into some trouble here and would appreciate some advice.

After multiple pulls, no crystals are forming, only a little bit of purplish goo after the first pull. This is the method used:

1.6 L of water
150 g of Sodium Hydroxide added to the water, let it solve.
100 g of MHRB added. stir a bit, wait for 2 hours.
add nafta 200 ml
stir the black lye part through the nafta.
let it sit for 4 hours.
pull 150 ml of nafta
freeze.
12 hours later, hardly anything, only reddish goo.

put the nafta from the freezer back with the lye-MHRB (leaving the reddish goo to dry) for 12 hours. slowly turn vessel over end.
scrape a little bit of the goo-turned-hard (miniscule-like, 0.02 estimate) added the nafta from the second pull to the remaining stuff on the bottom of the jar, put in freezer. There's even less residue this time, I take it out with a little bit of fresh nafta and let it evaporate on a plate. unsmokable reddish amount. put 150ml fresh nafta in the vessel.

12 hrs later: third pull:160 ml, put it in the same jar, in the mean while I warm 150 ml of the ice cold nafta to just room temp to add to the mixture.
added 1 tablespoon of NaOH
shake vessel

12 hours later: the jar contains no crystals or nothing.
pull again? hmm, I think something went wrong here.

hmm. So I have a couple of options, since I hope the spice to still be in the solution.

1. start pulling that last bit of nafta and see whether the shaking and tablespoon of NaOH did any good
2. add enough acid to let the spice mix with the water and basify afterwards.
3. throw it all away and start over. This option seems good, but I'm eager to learn from my mistakes.
4. throw it all away and do an A/B

I think I'll perform option 1 anyway, but I'm curious what went wrong.

Love and Light

naptha*

after adding mhrb to the naoh/water ive always let it sit for like a day or 12 hours before doing my first pull; dont know if that makes a difference.

adding 200 ml naptha is a big pull, maybe go for 50-100

but i think your bark is the problem. it might be from getting n-oxide-dmt instead of nndmt. perhaps the bark was sitting around in a warehouse for too long? thats all the advice i can give

try more like..

750ml water
80g lye
100g mhrb
70 ml naptha


I think you are using far too much naptha.
You could let the naptha evaporate until there is only about 50ml, then freeze precip.

Swim mixes it every so often for an hour or so, then lets it sit for an hour or so, then does the naptha pull.

Did you let the water/naoh cool after it's thermal reaction? If the basified water is too hot when the herb is added, problems can result.

using too much naphtha and not agitating enough possibly.

use as mad banshee says 70ml agitate every 5 minutes (i personally shake) for an hour then pull 50ml if you can. If this 50ml isnt saturated then id start worrying about my bark.

thanks for the reactions

So, this is what I will do: I will let some of the naphtha evaporate and agitate more.

I don't think the water was cold when the herb was added. What kind of problems are we talking about here, gaiaphile, and are they reversible in any way?

I'll keep you all updated.

Peace

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“For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections.”

Thanks for the good advice.

after evaporating half of the naphta and freezing again, this morning there where a lot of white flakey floaters in my jar.

Today I'll evaporate even more to get some real juicy crystals. Thanks guys.

Peace
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“For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections.”

On one occasion, the herb was incorporated just a few minutes after the water had been based (so it was still very warm) which resulted in very dark naphtha, which in turn yielded a dark brown gooey mess, if I recall correctly. I was unable to find a solution, but I remember finding a couple of folks who cited similar "dark naphtha" episodes from hot based water. The small batch was tossed, and never a problem since always allowing the water to cool.

Sounds like you're okay though, white flakey floaters, hurrah!

The white flakes dissolved in the naphtha once more and didn't reveal their presence again. So it might have been the heat while adding.

It was a valuable experience nevertheless, I've learned something about the process (no heat while adding the powder and less naphtha for saturation). tomorrow there is time to devote my undivided attention to extraction.

PEace.

Today there were plans to start over, but before that, check the freezer one last time. a small white minipyramid stuck to the glass of my jar. Woohoo!

so I opened the jar to take out the naphtha and evap the little rest and my crystal dissolved into a drop, possibly condensed water.
Is there a method for getting them out fresh and crisp?

Peace.

put the jar back in the freezer, it reappeared. took it out and it became a drop when I put it somewhere to dry, dissolved into the underlying material, I quickly picked it up and put it with some of his earlier scraped buddies in a pack, can't seem to locate it now.

thanks endlessness, I could have found that myself, sorry to bother you guys..

yesterday after some good old patience, there was some spice in the jar and it was perfectly scrapable. it was about .23 g beautifully white. I got some beuatiful visuals but no breakthrough, yet.

Troubleshooting during the extraction made me familiar with all the different steps, so I think next time I wont be that nervous to lose the spice (still have a jar upside down ). Thanks everyone. -Peace