Hello all,

Swim's at the end of a second extraction, via vovins tek.
At the end of the first the crystals were filtered into a b.filter after freeze precip, and melted into the filter, and (even under the guise of several tips) none of this spice was able to be recovered. Sort of beside the point, currently.
Second extraction, Swim felt the first extraction was not as saturated as it could have been, and thus went for relatively heavy saturation the second time around. To put it into scope, in the end, there was around 550-600ml of naptha for the first, and around 250ml for the second extraction.

Just as Swims first extraction, everything appears to go smoothly, it's only in the very final stages that there is ever issue. Swim's getting pure white visible spice every time via freeze precip, so Swim would assume everything up to the end has gone at least halfway decent. The second time around, Swim used a tip by Global, via searches, on pouring off naptha, freezing upside down, running off excess naptha, fridge-ing it upside down, run off naptha, retrieve crystals to dry. Swim placed these crystals on a plate to fully evap, and they all melted to the plate, and would appear to not be able to be scraped. There is a visible film where it is presumed the spice would lie within, but much scraping yields no crystals/dust, and the film appears to be largely undamaged even after thorough scraping.

Thoughts? How can Swim most adequately ensure he actually ends up with something usable the third time around?

The rest of Swims naptha is freezing. Hopefully some semblance of a yield can be retrieved from this.

Thankfully only minimally frustrated.

Thanks for your time,

~ Xtramint

Sorry you're having trouble, I know how frustrating this can be.

I think I've already addressed your problem when it happened the first time, though.
I believe the mistake you are making is scraping those crystals too early! You say the crystals have been formed and you decant/pour off your naphtha then pop it back in the freezer upside down to drain off the naphtha. This is good, but don't immediately scrape your cold crystals onto a plate when you take it out of the fridge/freezer. I did this once and they melted back into a puddle before I could even finish scraping them into a pile.

What you need to do is after draining off the dish upside down in the freezer, set it upside down on the counter for awhile. This lets the entire dish warm to room temperature and any water condensation to drip off the glass. Then wipe off any water from the outside/rim and let it sit upright to dry for a day or two. You don't get anywhere near the crystals with a scraper until all of the naphtha is evaporated and you can't smell any of it. THEN they will be rock hard little crystals that fall right off the glass as you scrape em up.

What do your melted crystals look like on the plate? You should be able to let it air-dry and recrystallize if you had anything there to begin with. The only other thing I can think of is that you're not extracting any dmt at all and your little crystals are actually just frozen water droplets. You could also try swishing some warm naphtha around the plate to redissolve and retry your precipitation. Good luck