I noticed in the aforementioned extraction ( https://www.dmt-nexus.me...spx?g=posts&t=23812 ) that melodic catastrophe used lye right off instead of sodium carbonate and then has to repeat step five with sodium carbonate at the end. Couldn't SWIM just use sodium carbonate instead of lye and not have to do step 11? and is there a perk to using lye?

Perk? No. There is actually a really big downside; The lye is such a strong base that adding a pube hair too much can raise the pH high enough to destroy the alks.

Source?

cool so would it all just be good if i used some converted baking soda (sodium carbonate) in place of the lye and stop at step ten?

This is not the case, ime, you can basify as high as you want with no ill effects. Rue alkaloids are some of the most stable out there when it comes to pH, heat, and degradation over time, afaik.

Sodium carbonate should work...I just got sick of having trouble with too low of a pH when basing, so I started using lye because very small amounts can be used and there's no need to add excess water to the overall extraction.

Seems I picked up some incorrect information. Probably remembering this as fact and not theory, to which I then apparently exaggerated.



Lye it up.

Yeah, you can definitely use sodium carbonate on both steps but I just prefer lye off the bat because like Snozz said, it takes a lot less material and there will be plenty of cleanup steps later, so there is little chance that excess lye would be in your end product AS LONG as you use sodium carbonate for your final basing.

Also, if you completely dissolve your lye in a small amount water before adding it to your salted alks, you can make sure there's no excess lye and still raise the pH with minimal additional water/base.