I'm going to be starting my first STB tek in a few days (mostly following Noman's Tek, but I've taken some tips from other sites. I want to make a diary of sorts during the process of the extraction so that I can see if I'm doing something wrong and need to start over, etc.

My plan so far:

1qt Ball jar:

1.) 750ml of distilled water
2.) 50g NaOH
3.) 50g MHRB (shredded)
4.) Let the solution sit for 24 hours in a warm place (I have seen some teks that suggest putting the naptha in immediately and some that suggest waiting until you put it in. Any experiences/suggestions as to which I should do?
5.) Add 50ml of naptha to the solution and let it sit for another 24 hours.
6.) Remove half naptha and empty it into another jar; freeze the jar for 24 hours.
7.) Dump the naptha back into the original jar (water + NaOH) and let the collection container sit until the crystals dry.
8.) Remove the crystals and store.
9.) Rinse and repeat.

I'd like to purify the product too, so I'm probably going to use the recrystallization method in Noman's tek, but I want to concentrate on creating the chemical first.

Does my plan look ok? Any other suggestions? I intend to do this within the next week or so, so I'll be posting updates, potentially pictures as time goes on.

Thanks for your help.

Macavity224 wrote:


"4.) Let the solution sit for 24 hours in a warm place (I have seen some teks that suggest putting the naptha in immediately and some that suggest waiting until you put it in. Any experiences/suggestions as to which I should do?"

I wonder the same thing,, Although I plan on using lime instead of lye ...I'm unsure if too much basic exposure damages the molecule.

Hi

All looks good except:

Once the lye/water/bark mix is in the container...shake/roll/mix it on and off for an hour or two.
You need to let the lye do its job of breaking down the bark and extracting the molecule from the vegetation and settling in the solution. (over night wont hurt it)

Then add the naphtha (40ml per 50g bark is sufficient per pull)
You will then need to mix the two together by shaking (lightly) or rolling.
The idea is to get the Nap to 'touch' every part of the lye mix....it wants to sit on the surface and slide over it...so mixing is a must (not just sitting there)....I give the mix a shake everytime I pass the bottle and see that it has settled.
Do this on and off for an hour or 2...then pull.
After around 3 or 4 pulls you need to do this for a longer time to get the remaining molecule...After a few hours of agitation and settling I leave in the cupboard over night while the other pulls are in the freezer...and the pull in the morning.

One more thing: Try and get a flat glass roasting dish...for freezing (food wrap as a lid)
You will find that trying to scrape out of a jar is difficult and frustrating..
Also make sure ALL the nap has drained and dried from the jar..(use a fan if you can or set on its side by a window to get the air through it.

Hope this helps..
Good luck

Ok, cool. I probably should have mentioned the shaking/agitation part of it, but it slipped my mind. So you only need the naptha in the jar for 2 hours before performing a pull, rather than for an entire 24?

Yes thats right

Some people pull sooner but I prefer to give it an hour or two of 'touching' the mix to give it a really good chance of saturating fully.
Also you want to pull all of the nap in the jar (or as much as you can without the lye mix).
Not just half. Tricky to suck it up but practice makes perfect.
If a bit is left thats fine...it will combine with the next pull.


Once youve done one successful extraction it will be plain sailing from then on.

Also have a look at the 'Salt' post...it really helps

Good luck

I'm still a little confused by what you're saying. I thought the mixture was supposed to be frozen after you put the naptha in, then you perform a pull. Are you saying that you can just put it in, agitate it for an hour or two and THEN do a pull right after with no freezing?

Sorry, a little confused

you freeze the Naptha after it has been pulled to precipitate the DMT.

^ As above....mix the two, wait to settle, draw off the Nap, put the Nap in a glass dish or jar and put it in the freezer for 18hrs or overnight.
The Action of freezing the solvent causes the product to 'drop out' of solution at the low temp and crystallize onto the glass.

Actually heating the mix/nap in a heat bath can help to saturate the nap further.

I've found that using a gallon ziplock bag as a separatory funnel makes it alot easier to get all the solvent out of the mix. I do my first three pulls back to back. I give it at least 20 minutes per pull in a warm eater bath (not too hot though) and then let the fourth pull sit over night. The first three pulls seem to get a good 98% of whats in there. By four there seems to be barely anything left and I start pulling the yellow goo as well, but that goo seems to be more related to the amount of lye. I start with a 3:4 ratio, but decided to try adding more after the third pull to see if it helps to release anything, but so far the only thing it's done is bring out the yellow goo.

Oops. I was messing up the order. Thanks for the clarification.

this is a really good thread, very well explained.. thanks o.p and everyone who contributed.
i may recommend this thread as reading material to some of my curios friends.

i have one question(not trying to hijack the thread).. here it goes..



yes! the jars are difficult to scrape. i have read here that some people use cling wrap on martini glasses or flat glass dishs like you said. but when i tried this, something went wrong because the DMT was forming into crystals all around the top edge of the dish right next to the wrap.. not on the flat bottom part where i wanted it to be. also noticed that there were some frozen drops of water on the plastic, i cant explain that.
did i not have the cling wrap tight enough or something?

@ Lewinii

Yep I would imagine that the wrap was not tight enough...An elastic band may help to secure it and keep it tight
If it sags a bit and water vapour gets in, it will form drops...if drops mix with the nap, ice will form (not a big deal as they just melt later)

If you get the nap on the wrap it may react/dissolve...not sure about this as I havnt tried it.

Strange that xtals are forming at the top and not settling under gravity to the bottom....hmmmm

I was planning on getting a couple of these for the pulls then putting seran wrap over them like you said. Do these look good? I'm just worried that the crystals will form all up and down it, like you said.

I have 3 of the square type dishes, use wrap pulled tight as lids and stack them up in the freezer with cardboard between them so they stack nicely.
3 pulls for an overnight freeze.
You can get right into the corners with your blade and you can lean them up against a wall and blow a fan onto them with no probs.

They xtals can only grow within the Nap...so I can only imagine that sloshing it around cause some nap to settle on the wrap lid..