A failed FASA attempt and the measures i had to take to save it got me thinking.

I'd like peoples thoughts on the following.

Vinegar extraction of the root bark (this is cheap so loads can be used), decanted and boiled/reduced down to a minimal amount. First in a pan, and and before it starts to thicken transfer to a smaller extraction container, and stick it in a pan of boiling water to further reduce it.

Free base with Ca(OH)2 (calcium hydroxide), mix in enough to give you the desired consistency crumbly or dry.

Pull with solvent of choice.

In case you wonder the point of doing this over just pulling from the root bark material, this will massively reduce the amount of material one has to work with, reduce solvent loss and the amount needed as there is no bark to get in the way of things.

I would imagine most people will be happy with the existing teks, but for me at least, and with my setup/equipment it would make it a bit easier.

If you have any doubts or notice a flaw in my logic let me know.

I'll just add, that for those of us that cant get powdered bark, the resulting fibres from using a cheap grinder are very annoying to work with.

That sounds like q21q21's tek with a boil.

Have you compared the yield between the q21's tek and your boiled tek? This is interesting...



The fibres are just fine with q21's tek in my experience

I haven't tried it yet, but will be reporting my findings, q21q21's tek didn't go too well on my first extraction, i messed up with the consistency but still ended up with a smokeable product after a lot of messing about.

Going by my progress from saving my failed FASA extraction, it looks like the working material could be 1/4 of what you would pulling your DMT from if you did the standard q21q21 tek.

With my next batch i'll test out this method, and then do some pulls on the bark with the standard tek to see if it leaves anything behind.

would be a lot of vinegar to boil down would be the main issue i think..
sounds similar to the cake method, switching out iso for vinegar

Just read up on the cake method, appears this is the same sort of thing, but using an acidic solvent for the initial extraction, that at least confirms my idea will work. I dont like the idea of using large quantities of alcohol just to be evaporated though (not quite cheap enough). I suppose this could be the poor mans cakeish method.


A reasuring update on saving my botched FASA extraction, after adding the lime and adding a bit of hot water, i got a good whiff of that DMT smell. Have a bit of a problem though, since the lime clumped up when i mixed it into the thick red dmt containing goo, it clumped up, and even adding more water there are chunks that could be trapping DMT, so i'll have to dry this out, stick in in my grinder and go from there. This is a step i could do without so it looks like caustic soda (NaOH) might be a better choice. Although adding a bit of water before mixing in the lime would have worked better i suppose.

A completely dry powder would allow people to use veg oil without any worry of it turning to soap. Just need to find out if FASA or FASI works with veg oil.

Another update, hope i misread but boiling methanol for the cake method, bloody hell that's just madness.

I just wanted to note rather than extracting straight into vinegar, you could boil the bark in clean water with a dash of vinegar to acidify following the traditional 3x30 min boils and then reduce that and proceed from there without having to use and boil down large amounts of vinegar

Ah that would save some hassle, then just add the NaOH and pull.

I'm assuming shredded bark can be used in the boil apposed to powdered? That would make things easier.

Yeah you can use shredded bark. The more shredded the better.

Was just thinking starting with water and/or vinegar should mean that i wont end up with any fats or whatever rubbish is in the bark, so when reduced down i shouldn't end up with anything as thick as to be expected with other solvents, in which case i might not have to be so careful with the vinegar reduction meaning i could get a more efficient extraction compared to lightly acidified water and boil it down in a pan without worrying about it sticking.

There is obviously a bit of experimentation required.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I might be on to something.

Vinegar/water boils on the bark, decant/filter, boil/reduce down a good bit, possibly freebase with sodium carbonate water (might be too low of a PH causing emulsion issues), pull with solvent of choice (veg oil seems quite happy with it), salt with FASW (possibly vinegar again if it will crystallise with this method), then freebase with sodium carbonate, pour off and dry perhaps somewhat impure freebase.

Would be a really cheap and safe method.

yeah, i did this with d-limonene instead of veg oil a couple yrs ago. yield wasn't super, but there were a few factors at play.