Hello everyone, this is my first post on these boards but I have been reading the forums for several months now, and I'm happy to say that I'm finally amidst my first extraction using a varied STB method.
If someone could check out my process and tell me if I screwed up somewhere I would be very greatful.
Everything seems to be going okay so far, but one thing has me a little worried that I might have messed up somewhere. My naphtha is supposed to a be cloudy white color, but mine is just clear with no visible traces of DMT (before freeze precip).
I was a little confused about one part of Noman's Tek. It says, "Mix 15mL water and 1g lye per gram of bark in the mixing jar. For example: 50g bark would require 750mL water and 50g lye." Then it also says in the Remarks section on the same page, "Note that if pre-powdered bark is being used, 1.5 - 2X of the water called for will be required." I have powdered bark and I had to add at least twice the water that it said (for a total of around 1500mL) because it was so incredibly thick with just 750mL that it didn't seem like the powder was able to completely dissolve. So, with all that extra water it said to add if using powdered bark, it didn't mention the need to add any more lye to the solution to compensate. I didn't add anymore Lye though just because I don't know enough about Chemistry yet to second guess Noman's Tek which several people have used with great success.
So - What I did was mix about 100 grams of Lye slowly to 750mL of water and stirred until everything was dissolved. Then I added in 100 grams of finely powdered Mimosa Root Bark (from
http://www.adenium.com.br/). After stirring for a while, the liquid was extremely thick and I could see that there was no way that all of the powder was going to dissolve into that much water no mater how much I stirred it. So at this point I went back to the check the Tek again and noticed that part in the Remarks section about doubling the water, so I did that and added in another 750mL of hot water.
I stirred the glass pitcher it was in until it had all dissolved into a black murkey (but now much more watery) liquid and then transferred it into a clear gallon sized glass wine jug. I placed the cap on the jug and shook and rolled it vigorously for several minutes until it had formed a fairly thick (2'' ish) brownish foam on the top of the black liquid. I let it settle for about 2 hours until pretty much all of the foam and bubbles had disappeared. The jug was still warm. I added 100mL of warm VM&P Naphtha (heated with warm water around a small glass) to the wine jug, and then decided to add another 100mL of room temp Naphtha just so the layer would be thicker and easier to extract with the turkey baster I'm using.
After adding the Naphtha I rolled the jug around (literally... it rolled easily on the carpet) for about 5 minutes, while turning it upside down and right side up every minute or so. After the 5 minutes of mixing, I let it sit for about 20 minutes to let it separate (even though it looked like it had separated completely almost right as I stopped rolling it back and forth).
I then proceeded to suck up only the top clear layer of Naphtha with my turkey baster and put it into a glass baking dish (approx 12''x6''
. I only sucked up about 60-70% of the Naphtha at first since it was getting harder and harder to only get the clear layer as it got thinner and thinner. I made sure to not transfer ANY of the black liquid to the baking dish though. With this 60-70% of my 200mL of Naphtha I placed it in front of my patio screen door on the floor with a fan blowing over it to make sure all the fumes got blown outside. I let it sit like this for about an hour and when I came back a noticeable amount of Naphtha had evaporated. So I went back to the wine jug and decided to go ahead and try to get more of the thin layer of Naphtha that was left. After some patience and careful turkey baster work, I added another 20-30% leaving only an extremely thin clear layer of about 5 - 10% of the total Naphtha I had used left.
At this point I looked into the glass baking dish and the Naphtha solution didn't look cloudy at all like its supposed to, so I am a little worried, but I placed it in my freezer anyways. After 4 hours I'm going to turn the Cold setting on max (its on 6 out of 9 now), then leave it in for another 4 hours. Hopefully I'll be able to see some crystals by then.
Again I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could let me know if anything sounded wrong with the procedure I used. Also, does anyone know why my solution doesn't look cloudy at all like so many people have reported once the solution is saturated with the DMT...?
Thanks again for all of the knowledge you all have amassed here and it's nice to meet you all!