Synkromystic wrote:I was using crown vm &p naphtha as well. I found it very efficient, although I DONT trust it's cleanliness, even though they say it's clean. It Always left a nasty chemical oil odor, but never any visible residue when evaporated. I would only freeze precipitate and That always yielded clean results. Now my local hardware store only carries Jasco Vm & P naphtha. Seems identical to the crown and is in the exact same packaging, except for the name change and a price increase.
Crown works well imo. I noticed recently though that is has all but dissappeared & Jasco looks to be the replacement.
I having tried using Jasco yet but aside from Kleen strip, which I do not trust at all for some reason, it's the only locally available naphtha.
Just a little heads up if it's not already known, a brand of naphtha can be clean, but even can to can there can be contaminants. Vm & p is technical grade petrochemicals & regulations are not as strict regarding impurities because they do not need to be when used for paint or varnish.
Evap testing EVERY can is neccessary before using.
Also, crown has always had a bit more of an aromatic smell to me, seems like there may be a fair amount of heavier (aromatic) hydrocarbons in there as opposed to lighter fractions of hydrocarbons. I always thouroughly washed my freebase spice in cold distilled water after using crown for freeze precipitation & if possible a few re-x`s with clean, pure, n-heptane before finely chopping & washing with water always netted me a pure white product (& nice clear Crystal shards before chopping). I`m a bit paranoid about technical grade solvents, but going this route always made me feel much Bette about smoking my spice, knowing if there were any impurities in my solvent that weren`t labelled, it was washed well enough to remove them before ingestion.