hopefully a more veteran member can assist on this...silly rabbit decided to buy pre powdered root bark...as usual a tek equivelant to nomans was used, never had a problem with this tek til now...an increase in water of 20% was called for on the tek that was used...so 720cc water-100g pre powdered bark-100g lye....an initial jar was done with minimal mixing of about 50ml of naptha and sat for about 2 days....produced some pretty white flakes....this led to a preperation of 4 more jars, of equal ratios as the first...this time, all were placed in a heat bath for atleast an hour at a temp of arounf 100 degrees, the thought was this would speed up and release more alkaloid....the jars were then allowed to sit and cool for a couple days....heres where things went south...the alkaloid was seperating from the base solution but settling in a very thin layer at the bottom of the naptha, even upon removing the majority of naptha it was nearly impossible to loosen the alkaloid up without mixing the plant matter into the mix.....any ideas?...could adding lye further increase the seperation?...Looking back, I think heating the jars and too hard of mixing the jars perhaps caused too much emulsion?...the alkaloid looks like a white milky layer between the naptha and base, I've searched everywhere and cannot find any other experiences with this....thanx for the help guys.....will only be by shredded from here on out..

Hello VanillaSpice!

Spice is very soluble in hot naphtha but not very much in cold naphtha, so IMO what happened is spice was dissolved into hot naphtha but as you let it cool it was partially released.

Try to carefully warm again in double boiler, the milky layer should dissolve into naphtha again, decant it and put into freezer over night.

Hope that helps.

That sounds like that may work...the heating def brought the "quality" of the product down... what was gathered from the freezer was yellowish/orange, looks like crayon shavings...while I realize it is usable, its far from what I typically yield...I think I will skip heating the jars from the beginning and keep from "heavy" agitations...typically I know its go time when I blow the clear naptha and it gets all cloudy, so awesome....so heating and cooling is sounding like the reason for the sandwich layer of alkaloid between the base and naptha...I was so frustrated...thats what I get for trying to be inventive...thanks for the feedback!