In order to transform 5-MeO-DMT from HCL into freebase, I've read countless recommendations. For many of them, it doesn't appear that the end-user actually did the process, but just pulled the idea out of a chemistry book. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but what follows are people that ask, "How did it smoke, how did it look?, how much did you lose on conversion," then the poster never responds back, which sometimes leads me to question the person's conversion technique or if they even did it. They may be completely spot-on, but with so many different methods, I'm looking for a sure-fire technique and one that usually requires the least amount of steps.

So far, here's what I'm seeing:

1.) Take the 5-MeO and mix with sodium carbonate (e.g., 1 gram of 5-MeO with 2 grams of sodium carbonate). Add a small amount of distilled water and allow a reaction to happen. Let this solution dry and now you should have a freebase solution.

2.) Take the 5-MeO and mix with sodium carbonate in the ratio I mentioned above. Allow to dry and then take a non-polar solvent (I have naphtha and acetone by Klean Strip) and mix both the non-polar solvent with the 5-MeO/sodium carbonate dry mix. Allow to the product to sit (for how long, I can't discern) and then filter off the liquid. Take this liquid mixture and move it to another container and allow it to dry. Do this process (add non-polar solvent to 5-Meo mix) a total of three times. After everything is dry, you should have a freebase mixture.

3.) Dissolve 5-MeO in distilled water. Add ammonia until you reach a PH of 8-10. Now extract with a polar solvent (vinegar?)

4.) Mix the 5-MeO with a "bit" of sodium carbonate and distilled water and allow it to dry. Next, do a pull with either isopropyl alcohol (I'm assuming highest strength available), acetone, or ethanol and then allow that pulled liquid to dry, which will give you the freebase.

5.) "Dissolve the 5-MeO-DMT HCl in water, preferably distilled water and not a very big volume, but enough to dissolve all the powder or crystals. 100 ml could be a workable volume but I don't know how much 5-MeO you have

Add NaOH (sodium hydroxide which is in some drain cleaners... but I wouldn't recommend using that! Try to order it somewhere or find a specialty shop. Sometimes it's called lye, it may be available in very common stores for some purpose. You need to add enough to get the acidity to a pH of 11-12 by adding some and testing some times to see where you are at. There are pH testing papers you can buy.

Assuming you don't have a separatory funnel, take a jar that is high rather than wide. Your water / 5-MeO solution should only fill half of it or under.

Add a non-polar solvent like Coleman Fuel to extract. To do that shake the content of the jar but be careful because the non-polar solvent builds up pressure, so open the jar in between the shaking. Shake very very well.

Remove the top layer (which is the coleman fuel. It's all transparent but it floats on top, you can see a line between the layers. Remove it with something like a turkey baster. I don't know a better alternative.

Repeat these last 2 steps to extract more out of it. Two times is sort of OK. Three times is definitely better. Four times not really necessary.

Put the liquid somewhere when it can evaporate completely, leaving you with freebase 5-MeO."* (taken from another source)

6.) "Dissolve the hcl in a spoon with ammonia, heat it while using a pin to stir it around a little bit, when it reaches a certain temperature it will melt. When it melts you stop heating it anduse the pin to collect it, it will gather in lumps around the pin. Place the rocks on a coffe-filter, the filter will suck out the wetness. Some people like to evaporate all the ammonia and then collect the crystals."* (taken from another source)

So, you can see my confusion with this process. Some look as simple as mixing the 5-MeO HCL with a bit of sodium carbonate and distilled water and BAM, freebase. Others say that you need to take the HCL, bring the PH to a certain level and then apply some kind of solvent to it and then allow that solvent for the freebase to be created.

Since no one possesses an infinite amount of 5-MeO HCL, what is the best, sure-fire way to approach this? I would truly love to hear from someone who has done this process themselves and then tested the end product. Thanks everyone. I'm certainly no expert on chemistry, so please correct me if I'm using the wrong verbiage or have concepts confused. I've been researching this for a couple of months and my current experiment isn't yielding what I would expect.

Bit of confusion with some of the techniques you mention above.
1. doesn't make sense unless you want it mixed with sod. carb.
3. vinegar isn't a polar solvent
5. what does this mean?
Avoid sodium hydroxide (drain cleaner) when you can use food safe sod. carb.

Method 2 is absolutely sound. If your solvent is warm (no flames) and you agitate the dried freebase/sodium carbonate solid for 10 minutes all the freebase will dissolve. Filter - or simply let is settle in a measuring column - place in wide base container and evaporate off the solvent. I don't think there's any need to redissolve in solvent; what you get out of this will be high purity and you won't be vaping much of it in any case.

I should add that I've now given up on freebasing 5-meo as the HCl version is also vapable.

In my own experiments I reckon you need more of the 5-meo:HCl by a factor of about 1:1.4

So:

7 mg of 5-meo:HCl is equivalent to 5 mg of freebase 5-meo
14 mg of 5-meo:HCl is equivalent to 10 mg of freebase 5-meo
21 mg of 5-meo:HCl is equivalent to 15 mg of freebase 5-meo

when vaped.

I don't know if others agree as it's my subjective experience based on limited experiences

Just as a point of information, acetone is not a non-polar solvent and neither is isopropanol. Both are completely miscible with water although IPA does form a separate phase if the water is saturated with salt or, especially - and conveniently, perhaps - sodium carbonate.