Hey folks,

I was out for lunch in Brussels today, great sunny day, and I bumped into SWIM. So we had lunch and he began telling me about this powered MHRB that he has just taken delivery of.

After his recent trip, he is determined to make his own batch for the next one.

So since he hasn't got an internet connection (what's up with that?) he asked me to ask you.

"When you were faced with your first Noman tek, what do you wish you would have known then that you know now?"

BTW I've printed out this great thread here as well as now going through all the other threads and stickys noting information.

SWIM says they will wait a couple of weeks collecting information and advice before trying it for the first time.

Thanks (from me and SWIM)

Peace.

Well I remember the first straight to base tek I did. I wasn't aware of how easy emulsion can form if you mix up the contents to rough.

I thought since there was a lot of lye in there that I could shake it up to mix the naptha with the mimosa soup and it would separate easily. I ended up with a huge layer of emulsion that took days to separate. I eventually reduced the emulsion using sea salt but even that took a looooooong time.

So I would say when your mixing your naptha or whatever solvent you happen to be using be gentle. tilt your extraction vessel back and fourth or roll it around let it separate then tilt and roll it again. Just do yourself a favor and never shake it. Not even a little bit.

Emulsion can be frustrating so you don't want any of that.

1. Get a good extraction vessel in which you can easily seperate your layers, so you can do many SMALL pulls without lye tea contamination. The Reason: Evaping tons of naptha not only stinks your house up, but is also not very eco friendly (and cheap, to top that off).
2. Use a reasonable amount of bark, so if you make mistakes or got a weak batch, you still get something.
3.Extractions using glass vessels in the sink only. Wear protection.

Can you define reasonable? SWIM has 500g and was going to go with 100g for the first one.

Cheers

Awakened

Great tip Dreamwalker, SWIM would have shaken it like mad! :-)

My tip is get good equipment, I haven't done this particular tek but I've done Ron69's mescaline tek, and...

Having good and sufficient equipment to work really makes things a lot easier, for example:

Have more glass containers that you minimally need on hand, when you do a tek for the first time chances are things won't go perfectly right away, and some extra containers allow you to separate or divide some pulls so that you can test and compare results.

And also a separatory funnel would be really handy. I right now have a gravy separator but it's a pain to work with (takes too long to separate the liquids and not always possible to seperate everything completely). Just ordered a sep. funnel.

And finally a few placemates might come in handy if you're working with agressive material, my kitchen counter now has a few permanent "stains" on it since it doesn't like HCL so much.

My best advice would be to use hdpe2 jugs for extracting, milk jugs are usually made of this material. Check the bottom of the jug for the hdpe2 symbol.

Get the best quality naptha you can find. For some reason people go on about emulsions after shaking. I personally shake like mbd every 5 minutes for half an hour and seperation occurs with no problem. I think lower quality naphta causes the emulsions, i use ronsonol lighter fluid.

If emulsions persist simply add more lye and place jug in a hot water bath, a sink with hot water
2l milk jugs are perfect for 100g extractions.

Thanks Evergreen and DeMenTed your tips are really helpful. You see so much good information on this forum. But it is the little "bugger I wish I had known that first, or read that before" tips that really make the difference.

That info can only come from personal experience.

Only if you're doing an A/B extraction. With an STB like Nomans, all of the bark remains in the aqueous phase, while the naphtha floats on top. Trying to drain the lye-bark sludge from a separatory funnel is just going to clog it.

I would go for 250g, but if you got a good extraction vessel, 100g might also do just fine (can't comment on milk jugs, as milk isn't sold in these things were i live). If everything goes as planned and you got decent bark, you can expect 0.5-1g. A good amount to experiment with. Just make no mistakes.

One mistake might be to freeze huge amounts of naphta. Your solvent needs to be cloudy before attempting a free precipation. Otherwise, you won't get everything out.

When doing your naptha pulls, heat the jars / jugs in a bucket of hot water (not too hot to put your hands in) - this supposedly helps the molecules migrate to the solvent better. Just place the jars in the water before adding naptha, do your 'jar tumbling' routine, then place back in the water as the layers are separating. I have found this helps emulsions budge as well.

I have been getting an extra 0.2% on my yields since adding this step...

Again thank you for your help.

One other question. I assume that there is no issue with the time between placing the naptha in a colleciton jar and putting it in the freezer? SWIM may have to do the pulls in one locaiton and transport the jars to another where the freezer is.

You'll be fine. Not necessary to rush it into the freezer. It will be okay in the naptha for a long time.

As for when: for STB I'd like...(times represent T:0 being when the lye is added to the bark and water)
Pull 1 @ 8-12 hours (I know many say earlier but this will be more likely drop your jaw in the morning than a 1 hour or 2 hour pull)
Pull 2 @ 24 hours
Pull 3 @ 36 or 48
Pulls 4+ @ 4-8 hour intervals from there

As for the pulls themselves I'd say do each for 10-20 minutes with a thorough but gentle agitation with the bark goo at the beginning, and once or twice more before separating the naptha.

My tip for separating: (Apart from using a lime-tek instead, like Q12Q21's tek... maybe next time though)
My first time doing it was a hayday. I worked so damn hard, breathed in lots of fumes and got maybe 60% AND SOME SLUDGE

Instead of doing one go at taking the naptha from the sludge get a naptha-safe turkey baster (every plastic turkey baster I have bought has been naptha/xylene/d-limonene safe, but TEST IT first!) and with the baster do a preliminary rough rough separation of the naptha to a smaller and thinner container (tall glass) where you get like 80-90% of the naptha and a significant amount of the sludge as well.

It may be 50:50 or 30:70 or 70:30 doesn't matter.
What matters is you have a small small thing to work with, it is thin so the 2-4mm that you will NEVER get without the sludge is only 10ml instead of 50-75ml or something.

Really makes the separation difficulty go from an annoying 6-7 (out of 10) to a breeze 2-3.

Secondary quick-tip:
Personally I haven't done this with a lye tek but I have heard great stories of others doing it and personally I have seem much faster extractions, higher and much whiter yeild just doing this ASS-EASY step.

Instead of just adding water then lye, add boiling hot or hot-as-it-can-go tap water then add 10% the volume white vinegar (5%) or even lemon juice can work. It will turn the soup from pinkish-brown to dark-reddish/brown.
This is what I'd call a semi-acid/base, I'm not telling you to brew then strain the bark or anything like a normal A/B, just like I said above.
It seems to really leach the DMT from the bark (I believe).

Whatever it does, just soaking it like that for 20-30 minutes in my limetek made the yield go from .5-.65% to .89-.97% (and up to 1.85% with d-limonene)
This should also cut down the lye required by a lot... I think. Don't quote me on this but if you add 5g or 10g of lime in water for 100g or 200g batch and it turns DEEP PURPLE-BLACK then I think that means what I said is true.

Wow, thanks q21q21, I think that will do the job nicely.

Run it through a strainer first and then you can use a sep funnel.

My advice would be to make sure the water/bark/lye solution is free flowing and not sludgy before adding the naptha. That could mean 1.5 - 2X the quantity of water called for in the original tek if one is using prepowdered bark. There should be no possibility of emulsions forming then.

And lighter fluid is not quality naptha. VM+P is quality naptha.

I was wondering about adding extra water earlier.

I'm doing an extraction right now in a 5 litre hdpe jug. 200g bark, 200g NaOH, 3 litres of water. The container's around 2/3 full, can I add more water to fill the container so that the top layer will be closer to the openening and easier to get out. I'd guess more NaOH would be called for if I was to add more water to keep the pH low enough.

edit: Also if adding more water, would you need to use more solvent? I guess not as most teks advise quantities of solvent based on weight of bark not quantity of water, just checking


So with enough water and using Naphtha you could shake it hard?


Unavailable for me I'm stuck with Ronsonol. On the lookout for different solvents though, so if anyone knows a good source in the UK please PM, cheers

I was wondering about adding extra water earlier.

I'm doing an extraction right now in a 5 litre hdpe jug. 200g bark, 200g NaOH, 3 litres of water. The container's around 2/3 full, can I add more water to fill the container so that the top layer will be closer to the openening and easier to get out. I'd guess more NaOH would be called for if I was to add more water to keep the pH low enough.

edit: Also if adding more water, would you need to use more solvent? I guess not as most teks advise quantities of solvent based on weight of bark not quantity of water, just checking


So with enough water and using Naphtha you could shake it hard?


Unavailable for me I'm stuck with Ronsonol. On the lookout for different solvents though, so if anyone knows a good source in the UK please PM, cheers [/quote]


Adding more water will need more NaoH to keep the ph high enough

Ronsonol is great for a solvemt, it evapps very cleanly and re-xing with it is fine too.

Shaking hard should be fine, ive done it loads and it works out fine. Just be careful and hold the lid with a cloth or something so that the lid doesnt budge.

You don't need to add more lye or solvent.

Thanks all for the tips, great information for me and any beginner.