I read that many people have trouble with crystals melting again after filtering or during filtering. In my case I filtered through a coffee filter and was delighted to find a small batch of white crystals. However, the filter, even it was frozen in my freezer overnight and the warming of the ether ether I use dissolved the crystals.

I suppose these crystals are now locked into the pores of the filter.

Is there a way to retrieve them? Would warm ether dissolve them out of the filter? It doesn't seem so cause the ether will immediately start spreading out through the filter, upward to the rim. It will carry the DMT with it all throughout the paper. Is this DMT lost?

I decided to just take a chance. The DMT must be there so I threw the filter in the soup, added ether to the mixture and repeated the appropriate steps of the STB tek. In principle the DMT would dissolve from the paper back into the ether, was my thought.

So, my question is, will that work? And my original question is, what procedure should I use to avoid the dissolving into the filter in the first place, using ether?

Thank you for any advice.

I am curious about this. I too had some Xtals melt into the filter. So now I just pour slowly, the Xtals never come out. Oops.. My bad. I now use a metal sieve, it is a fine grade. Work great! Anything trapped instantly drys and can just be tapped out.

Put the section of the filter in some warm naptha, stir around a bit and then wring it out as best you can, that should retrieve at least some of what is trapped.

Thanks for the help. I did warm some ether, which is what I use because I heard it was the best thing you could get. When I get access to the rest of the fora I might make a post where to get this in my country, cause it is not readily available.

Anyway, I chucked the filter in the mixture after that. The lye will hopefully do the rest.

But synchronicity or what have you spoke to me as I was searched for something else in a cupboard where I found a very fine mesh of something I used to make hash. This is a plastic cloth like material that comes in different mesh sizes. There are some commercial products out there to make hash these days but I did it the old fashioned way. Bad side is that it is white, so any crystals are harder to see.

A metal siff sounds like a good idea, but what mesh size does it need to have? A fine mesh would probably yield more product? Anyway, I will certainly try this cloth filtration and report on it when I get access to a more handy forum here for such things.

Edit:

I tried the metal filter but that didn't catch anything. :-(

I had a tiny shotglass in the freezer also, the ether had evaporated leaving yellow goo. At least I got that...