Hi again,
So, I did my first extract a couple of weeks ago, basically following marshfolds tek, but I messed up slightly by not doing several acid cooks, but one instead, kind of misinterpreted the instructions. I thoroughly filtered out any plant material using cotton balls and a t-shirt several times, last time squeezing out as much liquid from the bark as possible. I then let it sit to settle the really fine particles, decanted and filtered the rest of the slug again. The PH was exactly 4, according to my meter. I then mixed a lye solution and poured slowly until the PH reached 12.5 at which point I thought I'd rather not add more, I felt it was enough. It turned gray and then black, as expected. I then used what I believe to be naphtha, but here comes my first question. Where I live you can get two kinds of things, both having the same CAS number 64742-49-0 Naphtha, one is called "Reinigungsbenzin", the other called "Leichtbenzin". The main difference seems to be the length of carbon chains and the boiling point.
"Leichtbenzin" translates to "light-benzin" and it consists of mainly C6 and C7 Hexan free Carbon chains and has a boiling point between 60°-95° C. There is absolutely no residue when evapping a considerable amount repetitively on a clean CD/DVD
"Reinigungsbenzin" translates to "cleaning-benzin" and consists of mainly C7 to C9 Carbon chains and contains n-Hexan. It's boiling point lies between 100°-140° C. Also here, there is absolutely no residue when evapping a considerable amount repetitively on a clean CD/DVD.
Which one is preferable ?
However, I used the heavy one, "Reinigungsbenzin" and hot water bathed my basic solution with the naphtha on top for maybe 30 minutes for the first pull, then 2-3 hours for the second and 24h for the third pull, mixing as well as possible trying to avoid emulsions. Increasing the temperature and allowing gas to get out helped making quite good separations. I used a 35ml syringe to take the naphtha off each time. The naphtha had turned quite yellow each time, especially after the 24h pull. I froze and saw it snowing in my freezer, all looked good. The first batch (1st and 2nd pull) turned out to be quite white, whereas the 24h pull was much more yellow and gooey. So I decided to mix it all up again in a minimal amount of fresh naphtha and re-Xtalize. The outcome was then, to my surprise even more yellow, starting to look even little reddish and wouldnt xtalize so good looking oily and hard to get of the freeze container. So I did that again, worsening the color even further. I evapped the rest of the naphtha after freezing and had to manually xtalize the remaining goo. I regret doing that really, but then again it was my first attempt. The yield was ok, but could have been a lot better.
Since the product was my first smoke ever, I cant really compare, but from what I can tell it was very intense. Starting out with a ringing in my ears, the feeling of all my pores opening and nearly forcing me to cloes my eyes to then for the first time see hyperspace. I'm quite experienced with acid, shrooms and extracted mesc, but the intesity was definitely unmatched.
For my second extract I used twice the amount of MHRB and followed Q21Q21's Vinegar/Lime A/B Extraction Tek. It turned out very well. Also here, I used naphtha, because I am aiming for a smokeable substance and couldn't be bothered to do FASI salting of fumerate solution. I have all the ingredients and I will try next time but for the first dry-lime try I thought naphtha is more easy. The yield was very good. I got EDIT: oops meant to say 2.6g very fluffy powdery white and 0.2g more reddish gooey out of 220g of Bark, although it seems little bit less potent than the reddish spice I made earlier. So here would come my second question. I'm really aiming to get a harder more crystalline product, for that reason I'm really considering doing some defatting on the bark, even though I've read over and over it isn't really necessary.
Would defatting it help getting a less oily more crystalline product ?
How would I de-fat in a drytek ?
If you look at the pictures I took after freezing you can clearly see the oily patches, especially after the long 24 hour pull. Could I avoid those with defatting ?
Thanks in advance
First 2 pulls
http://imageshack.us/f/836/dsc00016ik.jpg/
24h Pull
http://imageshack.us/f/827/dsc00029wm.jpg/