it depends if I work at it enough, if I dont like what I see after 2- 3 hours ill re disolve the spice and slowly cool again till I get the formation I want
and your right, there was more from re-xing the gram, just smaller x-tals not woth taking pictures of


yes your crystals are uncommon and what most desire to make I would think, I know I do
so what ever you do !! you do it right and well!!

-That would be incredibly cool; almost like watching art grow.



-I always let it evaporate at room temp to get any remaining spice. If it's excessively waxy/gooey I just recrystallize it again. Some of the goo is likely dmt n-oxide and I haven't experimented with converting it to freebase. Never throw anything out unless you have to; there's always more spice that gets stuck somewhere during the process ha.

-I see, so you are essentially letting crystals form at room temp and then redissolving until desired size is reached? That would make sense.

-I will gladly post a write up for re-x'ing 1g of spice to yield gem-type crystals with pictures if anyone would like. I'm interested to see if others will have success with my methods. I wouldn't post that in this thread though right?

-I apologize cozmo. Swear I'm not trying to hijack your thread haha.

That would be awsome. Im sure it would help out many nexus members.

-Ok, I will begin to work on this then. Be warned I am a busy individual with a family and this is going to take a while. But when I get it done I'll post a link in this thread for sure.

Hello again!
swim has recently re-xed and crystalized spice using the quick notes
that nmk8743 left back a few post ,thanks again nmk8743
the only thing different is that swim used naphtha instead of heptane, heptane doesnt seem to work AT ALL. no matter how slowly you cool the solvent it only produces tiny tiny flakes of x-tals in clusters, you cant pick the cluster up with out it all flaking away.
So naphtha seems to be the best solvent for growing large x-tals and heptane is only good for obtaining an ultra pure spice



that big chunk is exactly 0.1

Nice work, those look good. It's funny that you've had results with naphtha. I've been the other way around and heptane is the only time I've had success. But who knows haha.

Woah nice looking crystals look like little dmt gems.

Are they pretty solid when you handle them? And did you use my rigged up thermos method? Haha

you know, this whole ordeal is quite rightly pissing me off now( the whole crystalization)

before the x-tal would come out like the first post swim posted. swim was letting it cool only to room temp in about 2 hours with just the beaker in a glass of water.

then I tried your method nmk8743.
I used a thermos that was supose to retain heat up to 6 hours (with out the cooler step)
I left it for a day and put it in the fridge over night the next morning I put in in the frezzer and what came out is pictured above, so it worked!

Now to answer your question nmk8743, the big one is like layered and kinda brittle
the other pieces are like little rocks, but still no where near the quality of yours.

heres where EVERYTHING goes to shit.

before swim had only used naphtha, swim decided to try using heptane. this time swim did add the cooler step to allow a much slower cool down time. what swim has is a foam thermal chest not to big not to small. swim did everything the same except thoes 2 changes.

end result are tiny tiny slivers of x-tals in clusters and when you go to pick it up its like slush cause the x-tals are so fine.

now Ive tried everthing I can think of

added cooling time
reduced cooling time
not using the thermal chest
using the thermal chest
different amounts of solvent where tried to no luck
starting the cooling process from different temps

and heres where chemistry decides its fun to mess with me

swim decided to go back to start and use naphtha again.
to his suprize !.....tiny tiny x-tals

I literally cant get anything to grow larger then the thickness of a human hair
all of a sudden.

so I did some reading about crystalization in general


supposedly, there are zillions of factors such as the content of the air in the environment
and thats not something swim can change all to easily

I can't for the life of me figure out what variable changed

perhapse my beaker is shot?

some info on general crystal growing

http://xray.tamu.edu/pdf...guidetocrystalgrowth.pdf

That is interesting. Are your containers clean? I mean acetone wash clean? Dust particles will affect growth significantly. But you're right there are tons of variables and by no means is there a step by step to absolutely get what you want.

Oh and here's the ratios I use of spice:heptane that have produced crystals like I pictured pretty consistently.

1g spice: 25ml heptane

You can adjust to fit the amount of spice you're re-xing.

usually I clean my glass pretty well , but you never know.
I shall look in to that as a suspected variable change
and try the acetone wash

thanks for the ratio of spice to heptane
I was doing 1g to 30ml just a bit different but it counts

I will get back to you with the results
after a retry with such

No problem, good luck with it. I hear you on the frustration, trying to grow crystals has ruined many a day for me haha. But there's no such thing as a failed experiment!

New crystals growing, this is at room temperature from 165f over 36 hours. Will be moving to fridge and freezer soon so they should be done tonight or tomorrow!


Untitled by nmk8743, on Flickr

I give up, swim super cleaned everything with lab grade 99.5% acetone,swim made a speceial filter to keep dust and hair out

swim went about the process like a real lab would , swim recorded all of my data/procedure inspected everything for contamination so on and so forth

swim allowed the heptane to cool to room temp for 72 hours put it in the fridge for 6 ,then freezer

I got the same damn tiny slivers only difference is they were not scatted they were all in one delicate flaky bunch,

I've changed every variable that I actually have control over at one time or another and nothing about the crystal structure changes.

nmk8743 do you ever use a seed crystal

I have not before but have been wanting to try it.