I've just recently dived into the extraction and DMT experience and I've only had a little success so far.

I started out with 100g of mhrb and I've managed to get maybe 60-100mg of spice out of it. My first extractions were with Bestine and managed to get 30mg or so from one pull, with all other pulls producing nothing. I have to admit that my very first pull produced nice looking snowflakes but they ended up dissolving for some reason (probably my fault, letting the solution warm before trying to pour, not sure why I did that) and when I went to re-freeze with a bit more bestine I ended up spilling it, so I may have wasted a lot of the initial product. I used about 1/3 of the bark in each solution I've created and I've tried pulling with Bestine with 2 of them. The next extractions were with Naptha and the first pull (with the last 35g or so of bark) produced about 30-40mg of powder as well. The first batch with bestine was very white and the second with naptha was a little discolored, but still pretty white. I've been doing STB with a slightly less than 1:1 lye to bark ratio. My bestine pulls were at room temp and my first naptha pull (the good one) was at room temp, while the latest one was heated to around 55C. The last, heated pull was with all of the remaining powder/lye solutions with naptha (from 3 different containers). I put in more than the recommended naptha and tried evaporating it down, but I ended up with almost no product (just a thin coating that I had to scrape to even make it visible, not even 1/10 of 30mg), and it was pretty much pure yellow. I didn't save it. I'm going by Noman's tek, roughly, with the only differences described already.

A few notes on what I did. I added lye to water. I added bark to that. I shook that a whole lot. I let that sit for a day or more, I added solvent and turned the containers end over end for about a minute, four times for each pull, and then put each pull into a separate container that I froze.

Is it likely that I wasted a lot of the initial product? Even so, I can't imagine there was so much in the first, loss pull that I only got 60mg out of the rest. I'm not confident that the bark I got was particularly good quality, random seller on ebay. Everything I'm using has been glass, my freezer's cold enough to make crystals, and I have definitely gotten at least some spice pulled, but I want to get some tips before I get more bark. I'll likely continue to try pulling from the remaining solutions and hopefully I'll manage to get better luck.

Could it be helpful to try a different tek? I was considering doing an A/B next. I was going to get a significantly large amount of bark to work with, both because I enjoyed the experiences so far and because I wanted to have more to work with. I don't think I'll have problems getting access to materials but I don't want to get more than I need and I'm not sure what would work best. I may go for a luxury item or two (separatory funnel instead of glass baster and eye dropper) but I'm a bit of a miser... Basically, I'm going to try a larger scale extraction next and I want to to make sure I do it right. I was reading about certain specific plastics being good for some teks, but I'm not sure which teks with which chemicals or which plastics. I'm not trying to make so much at once that I need to store it for a long time. I've made enough mistakes at first that I'll be quite certain to avoid carelessness in any future extractions.

I tried smoking both good batches and they were definitely potent but I only got my technique right as I used up the very last bit... which is just a little frustrating. This whole post seems like a mess to me but I guess the general idea gets across somewhere...

welcome. Are you using MHRB powder or chunks? Best bet is to increase the surface area of your bark (grind it in a blender and it will be perfect). Keep away from powder though. Second you should shake/tip that jar for an hour at least, I like to do it while i watch a movie and then longer, tilting it end to end until the solvent disappears, let that sit untill it comes back to the surface and go again

I've been using pre-powdered bark. Also, I'll try your suggestion of shaking longer. The heated batch I got tired from shaking so hard so I'll probably have to take it a little easier.

For all I know there might still be a decent amount of spice still left in those mixtures. I actually just tried freezing that same naptha again, unaltered after being poured from the container with the yellow spice, and it started making some crystals, though not a lot, but it was also milky. I'm going to evap it more and see how it goes.

If I get anything to make this process better it's definitely going to get something nice for mixing and freezing.

If you wait until your naphtha turns piss yellow than you know for sure you are pulling something

Let the naphtha sit on the soup for a long period of time.
A lot of teks state that 30 minutes is long enough but I find letting it sit for 12 to 24 hours pull a lot more.
Maybe because I use a magnetic stirrer and let it stir for a good 8 hours.
Pulls without the stirrer were much less succesful

I've managed to figure out at least on problem with the process so far.

One: I think my freezer could be colder or at the very least I need to let my freeze precipitations sit longer. I've found that multiple days of freezing have produced at least somewhat better results.

Two: I'm going to try evaporating the naptha more before freezing and after pulling. I'm mostly just trying to see if it's a problem with little to no DMT in pulls, or simply a problem freezing the DMT that ends up in there.

Updates and good news!

I accidentally almost completely evaporated my naptha when trying to shave it down but it turned out great! I'm using a crockpot with heated water to let the glass container with solvent sit in it while I let a fan blow over it. It evaporates very, very quickly. I was surprised at how quickly, but very pleased at what I learned.

I ended up seeing a lot of yellow crystal formation (a little white) which has restored my faith in my extraction process. The amount produced was fairly large considering the fairly small amount of material I was working with so I have to assume that the problem has been with freeze precipitating.

I'm guessing that I'm either getting too many impurities and/or using too much solvent.

Either way, I'm definitely going to evap down my solvents more before freezing and letting them sit for longer. I imagine my freezer could be colder but it does work.



Anyway, I'm going to be ordering a 2L brosilicate glass flask for future mixing and a handful of smaller, wide-mouth jars for freezing. I've had success getting very white crystals with STB (at least once), so I'll probably stick with this for a little while, but I'm probably going to end up experimenting with A/B at some point in the future.

I thought shaking was not good. Rather tilting the container slowly to avoid emulsions? I have been doing 10 minutes of that, then let it sit so the ether floats up, then repeating that 2 more times.

I read this is a common mistake people might make. They have too much liquid to DMT ratio. Evaporate seems good before you freeze the lot.

I have very little experience as I am just starting doing this, but the first batch I did had maybe 50 milliliters of ether and it did not become very cloudy. I checked regularly, which could disturb crystallization I read somewhere. Patience is a virtue here.
My second attempt, also 50 gram of Mimosa, I used the same amount of ether in my soup but reduced it to around...maybe...20 milliliter. I expected a more cloudy solution. I made my freezer somewhat colder using a button on my freezer that does that apparently. Not very cloudy, however when I poured it into my filter a lot more crystals appeared then I was expecting.

Too bad I lost it all when it dissolved again.

The devil is in the details with this process I am sure. But my next goal is to get some lab glasswares. Having the right equipment sure should help.