I'm currently working on lazymans tek STB and I keep failing to get any yields whatsoever.100g powdered bark, 100 grams NaOH, 600mL water. let basified bark water sit for over a day in a warm place (my room is upwards of 85 degrees usually), then add naphtha, sit for almost another day or so, siphon off, throw in my freezer (which i temped to be around -2*f) annnd... nothing. over and over i can't get anything. I've tried different vendors, pre powdered, chunks, shredded, whole... it just never works for me.
Does anyone have any ideas, suggestions? The very first time I did it, i had a GREAT yield. it all worked perfectly. every single goddamn time since, nothing at all, or maybe a couple tiny tiny bumps...

I had the exact same problem. My first extraction went without a problem. The next few stb's were nothing but trouble. I suggest switching to A/B extractions. After switching to A/B swim has had nothing but amazingly clean spice with high end yeilds. Sorry I couldn't help more but I never did figure out what variable changed in my latter stb's.

Heres the tek swim uses. Its post #12. CLICK HERE

I think I'll be trying the a/b next time. seems more surefire. Plus, I have everything i need.. well, except all the bark that i wasted(?) this time, so.. more of that will come when i get enough money I suppose.
Thanks for the quick replies though!

Do you swirl the lye+naptha? You didn't tell, and I've got no precipitates the times I didn't do it.

In fact I prefer to use a marker to know at what level the lye/naphtha boundary is, shake like crazy, then solve the emulsion by heating, swirling and adding NaOH water, and then siphon off and freeze. People here seem to hate emulsions a lot but I've had no problem with them.

Lazyman´s also didn´t go too good for me my advice? change teks

^ i shall be changing teks
and yeah i swirled, shaked, bumped, bopped and otherwise molested the jar. end over end, upside down, swirled, etc. even during a heat bath, so far.. nothin.

how much naphtha per how much bark did you use?

where is the bark from?

chemistry is on your side, unless something is wrong (such as bad bark or too much solvent per bark meaning its not saturated enough to crash in the freezer), then it will work. Try pre-evapping the naphtha till a third of ammount and freeze again

yeah thats currently what i'm doing. I'm using roughly 1/4 naphtha per bark water ratio, i think. so right now 150ml to 600ml water

its not about how much naphtha per water, its about how much naphtha per bark.. 600ml water doesnt say how much bark there is, so... how much is there?

and when I said 'pre-evap till a third of amount', I also dont mean compared to the water.. I just mean, evaporate a significant amount of the naphtha and try freezing again, as it may have not been saturated enough.

and yeah, i know you mean 1/3 original volume of naphtha

After evapping and then freezing for a good 10+ hours, this is what I was left with.

Towards the end of an extraction I might get a pull that has very little dmt content. Usually these jars show nothing after 24 hours of freezing. After 3 or 4 days I will have a couple crystal clusters. 10 hours IME is not nearly enough time if you have a low dmt content in your naphtha.

yeah, it'd be one thing if this was my last pull, but this is everything i got from 250 grams STB over 4 or 5 days.
also, I evap the leftover naphtha afterwards and have been left with nothing but plant fats/oily residue

where is your bark from? maybe its not good to begin with?

in any case my bet is, in what you call 'plant fats/oily residue' is your dmt. I would warm up some naphtha (no open fire! boil some water first, turn off fire and submerge the bottom of a glass with naphtha on the water for a couple of minutes). Then use a minimum amount of this naphtha to pick up the oily residue. Lets say maybe 50ml naphtha.. The idea is to have a minimum amount so that it picks up most of the dmt but leaves some oils behind (so add enough to colour the naphtha but leaving a small dark layer behind). Then freeze for 24 hours with freezer on lowest temp setting.

dont throw anything away, let us know if it worked or not

btw im moving this to the extractions help section, thats where these question should be

The move worried me. I thought my topic was banned for some reason =/
Anyway, yeah the oily residue did smell like spice... From one of the containers I evapped, i stuck it back in the freezer for a while, and upon scraping there was some white mixed in, but shortly after it melted into the oily deal again.

I believe the bark was from some ebay company. Probably not a good place to order from >_> so I won't anymore, I have some recommendations I want to try.

and uh.. I already threw away most of the stuff.
If this is the case, how do I avoid the oily crap next time so I just get proper crystals? A few of them are forming here and there... and I don't want to play around with naphtha more than I already need to. First time, every time, i say.

Hmm. Oddly enough, i got home from evapping the rest of the stuff that didn't crystallise in the freezer and... Lo and behold, there were some circles of good stuff. I scraped them together and got way more than what I have been, but way less than what I expected. I'm happy that I got any though. This is, after all, the first pull. More is evapping now, as well as the whole bark water naphtha takin a bath on the stove with some fresh naphtha. I'll let it hot water bath for the rest of today while I go to work, come home, and.. well, should I siphon it off after a good 7 hours of hot water bathing or... well, what?
heres what we got. (It's all going into the trash, of course. I simply enjoy chemistry and learning. This has been.. a learning experience, damn)

How are you measuring your NaOH? Are you using a scale that goes up to 100g or more?
I'm curious what the Ph of your water is. My first extraction yeilded the same results as you. I added more NaOH and let it sit without naphtha for a few days (stirring occasionally).

After that, all my pulls were 100% better.

Just from personal experience I have a gut feeling either your bark is bunk or there's something fishy going on with your NaOH.
BTW: I love the penny picture "Liberty" and "In a god we trust". Kinda cracks me up.

After measuring the original amount of everything, I added an additional 100 mL water and 15g lye to the solution, and this result, i believe, is the product of that. I'm measuring it on a scale that goes to 600 grams, with a readout of 000.1.
Came home to my freeze precip and FINALLY! there were TONS of crystals all over the bottom. Dumped em out, gathered what I could, and the rest of the naphtha is evapping.
Awesome.
Smoked two hits earlier, got to that crazy ass stage right before you break through and I got scared... Didn't want to break through. Of course, I was ill prepared and didn't intend on breaking through from the beginning (just wanted to ensure this was the final product I was going for), but... it made me anxious and think twice about wanting to break through again.
My friend is going to give it a go tonight. I gave him a PSA about it, told him it's nothing you do to "get fucked up" or anything you wanna "trip balls with." No, fuck that, that's not DMT; that's acid or shrooms (at times). Told him it's the most intense thing he will have ever experienced, and He's read up on it, so I trust he understands it and won't abuse it.

Thats a nice looking spice good job