i followed a stb tek using 600ml water and 100g lye. i then waited 48 hours (tek said 24 but i was out for a couple of days) and added 150ml swan lighter fluid. then put it on top of my heater (possibly at about 35-40c) and left it for 24 hours, naphtha was still clear. waited another 24 hours, naphtha still clear so i added roughly another 25g of lye and left it another 24 hours and again the naphtha shows no signs of having pulled the spice out of the solution. the tek said there's no point going onto the freeze precip stage if the naphtha remains clear, but i took out about 50ml and froze it just for curiosity sake and (as expected) there was nothing of any significance.

the only variable that i altered from the tek is that i used tap water instead of distilled water and i had it on top of a heater which was probably considerably hotter than the 29c suggested by the tek.

any suggestions would be appreciated

The naphtha doesn't have to change color. It can remain clear and still pull spice. Evap your pull until it is cloudy and then freeze precip it.

like i say i removed 50ml and froze it with no results. seems strange that with 100g of mhrb from mhrb-shop.nl (which everyone seems to say is consistently good quality product) a 50ml pull recovered nothing :S

the tek i'm following involves no evapping. just removal of naphtha, freezing it then re-adding it to the solution and repeating. reluctant to evap unnecessarily.

Your naphtha isn't saturated enough to crash the alkaloids out in the freezer. If you evaporate it down until the solution is cloudy you will have more luck. Believe it or not some teks leave out important details

bleh. thanks. i need to start remembering to look at faq

*edit: and thanks actualfractal. seems this tek did indeed leave out some vital infos, lol.

yes I can say that what they are telling you is correct.

last night i had some jungle spice that i wanted to use to make pure crystals, so redissolved and phase changed by salting it out then nuking it with basic water. the water turned to a milk like substance the instant i hit it with base, then washed it 3 times with warm heptane. the heptane was completely clear but the basic water turned from a thick white to clear yellow, obviously washing something out.

I heated it on a hotplate until a little over half the volume evaped, and slowly cooled it and by the time it was in the freezer it clouded up