___EDIT____ Sorry I'm a n00b, I thought I was posting this to the general help thread. Move it if need be (not that you need my permission for that anyway)

Hey guys, this place is a wonderful resource and a great community, I am proud to be a part of it. I've read the FAQ, the handbooks, and every tek I could find. If I were to hypothetically attempt my first extract, I'd be going StB and use a hybrid of Noman, Swig, and relevant parts of Vovin's tek (mosly for later steps as his is A/B). These questions are all hypothetical of course.

First question is would I be basing my water amounts off of the amount of lye I would be using, or off of the amount of powdered MHRB? I would hypothetically use 1.5g lye per 1g of MHRB powder as I've heard you can't over-basify, which would make a significant change in my water usage depending on which substance I'd be going off of. Which brings me right to my next question...

Second, and I've seen it addressed but with varying responses, do I need to increase the water for powdered bark? I've heard 15ml of distilled water per 1g of (again MHRB or lye) but Noman suggested more along the lines of 25ml. 25ml is what I'd lean toward as it's apparently better for it to be watery and not sludgy.

Third, and this is more of a clarification again, how much naphtha is ideal? From what I've read it sounds like .6ml of naphtha per 1g of powdered bark, but I've heard all the way up to 1ml per gram of powdered bark. I think I would use 30ml for 50mg of bark, hypothetically of course, but I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Fourth- for a freeze precip, is it better to use pyrex or ball jars? Noman calls for half pint jars, but I've heard a lot of favoritism for flat pyrex. I currently have both and I'd lean toward jars as they seem easier to get air tight.

Fifth and last question, sorry so many, but it seems to me it would be ok to do a bicarbonate wash before freeze preciping the crystals, however in some teks that is not the order the steps were in. Would there be a problem washing prior to freezing, or would you have to freeze then wash? It just seems that if it would just be going back in naphtha anyway that, well... you get it.

Thanks so much in advance for any input or insight. Hopefully this will be a first post of many for me here!

Welcome to the nexus! I have a few extractions under my belt so I'll attempt to answer to the best of my knowledge:

1. I find adding water is more for making it easier for the MHRB to fully soak in and for the solvent layer to separate. I found anything more than 10ml per 1g MHRB to be ideal. Lye is measured on how much MHRB you have. 1g lye/ 1g MHRB works well for me.

2. I've only used powdered bark, but I don't see why it would require more water. 25ml per 1g sounds like overkill to me I've had great success with 12ml/1g.

3. Using less naphta gives you easier crystallization. If you use .6ml/1g you can do your first pull in a few hours. The more naphta the longer you have to wait for the naphta to become concentrated enough to freeze precip.

4. Use whatever container you want, it doesn't have to be airtight just make sure mist doesn't form and drip down into your solution. For the last precip you would want to use something that would make it easy for your to scrape the crystals out of, I use a pyrex dish for the last one.

5. I haven't tried a bicarbonate wash. After 5-6 freeze precips my product looks very pure and all I need to do is slowly dry the crystals. I use a warm water bath and a small amount of heated naphta so as soon as I take it out of the freezer I melt it down and leave the fats/oils stuck to the bottom of the container and put it back into the freezer.

OK thanks, great info! I would prly go with 15ml for water then, as that's what the tek calls for, and it doesn't seem much more than your 12ml. I wouldn't be in a rush for the freeze precip so .6ml will be a minimum for me. Thanks again for your input. How is that the warm water and naphtha bath keep refining it after repeated uses? I believe you and everything but it just seems like doing the same step repeatedly would stop working.

I would still like some input on the last part of my question with the sodium bicarbonate wash. If anybody else wants to chime in on any of the questions, that would be great!

It's more a matter of how the mix looks than a precise ratio. If it's free flowing like a thin vegetable soup, you're good to go. If it's thick like chowder, you need to add more water.
You DON'T need to add more lye if you add water.
As for a bicarbonate wash, my tests show a loss in yield at the lower pH's obtainable with bicarbonate. I tend to skip NP washes altogether and worry about cleanup after the freeze precip.

Noman! Thanks for weighing in. Your tek is my favorite and is what essentially convinced me that it's something I could hypothetically do, and do right. I am a little confused though as step ten on "DMT for the masses" now calls for a carbonate wash.

Also by saying "I tend to skip NP washes altogether and worry about cleanup after the freeze precip." are you referring to recrystallization with Heptane/Bestine?

I was also wondering would the spice be smokable without any further steps past a first freeze precip?

Thanks again for your time and input!

That's carbonate, not bicarbonate in step 10 and it was only added to replace the ammonia wash since some people insist on washing.
I don't actually think either are necessary, especially if you intend to recrystalize, but to answer your question, yes you can just perform the wash on the NP before you freeze precip.
By "cleanup after" I mean that I prefer to get everything out of the extraction in raw form and then wash, recrystalize, FASA, whatever, later on the much smaller and easier to deal with amount of material.
But then my work these days is more for data collection than for getting something to smoke, so it makes more sense to split the process up into those two different steps.
For getting smokable product, you're perfectly fine to use what comes out of the freeze precip. I'd say just worry about that for now and deal with refining later.

Thanks man, that really helps to clarify things a lot. You guys have been a huge help.