Ruffles wrote:There are conversion teks in the wiki, you should read them all and make sure you understand the principles. Be prepared to lose some weight due to less fumarate and due to the process itself, but its worth it.
To answer some of your questions: If you have dry fumarate, keep it as such until you are going for freebase conversion, that`s the most stable form of DMT. Acetone is not a good choice to manipulate-wash freebase in my opinion. If you already dissolved fumarates in H2O, you might add carbonate (at least equal weight to fumarates) and then follow up with a two-phase liquid separation (just read below), but I believe that paste-n-pull is probably easier to manipulate because of the smaller volumes overall. Jungle spice (yellow or red stuff) is not really a problem for DMT consumption and effects. Xylene grabs yellow and red stuff which you won`t really be able to separate without recrystallization in a different solvent like hexane, you are going to lose white stuff while trying to lose the yellow red. Your fumarate crystals and yellow water looks fine and clean enough, don`t expect the white perfection without more steps that costs yield.
This is how we do it: Add 1:1 weight (that`s 1 g NaHCO for each 1 g Ds, you can safely add a bit more carbonate, like 1.3 g for 1 g) of sodium carbonate powder on top of your dried fumarate, mix well. Put it in a flat glass container that you can fit your hand on to easily handle the mix, like a glass petri dish. Add water bit by bit, add some, mix, add more, mix... do that until it turns into a paste. Wait 10 min or so for the high pH to convert fumarate to freebase. At this point you might see a brownish residue either stick to the glass or rise up, that`s most of your freebase. Then comes the tricky part, which is separating the freebase from water and sodium and fumarate (the components of the mix). If your freebase brown gunk coagulated enough and is stuck in the glass you can just add cold water drop wise and tip the glass plate, collect the water that comes down until you see that whiter stuff not near your gunk, that would be washing.
However, and here is my advice: in our experience freebase doesn`t coagulate or stick to the glass well. The way we do it at this point feels easier, which is basically a two phase NPS-water separation: just grab all the water and white and gunk and put it into a tall skinny glass, then you add a small amount of your low evap temp NPS (hexane, dcm, xylene, check DMT freebase solubility to know exactly how much NPS to add) and add to water-gunk-fumarate-carbonate water, do a shake and decant off the polar-water unwanted stuff, freebase goes into NPS (you may do 2 pulls to make sure to grab all). We do a second wash on the NPS, by adding clean water that has a pH of at least 9 or higher and doing a shake. Then we grab the NPS and put it on the evaporation dish (glass petri dish or similar) and after NPS is gone you can cut it with a razor blade. It comes out fumarate and sodium and carbonate free. Should look transparent after dried and then white to yellow after you cut it.
Thanks for all the useful advice. I have read many of the teks and somewhat understand the principles behind backsalting and freebasing.
1: I don't mind the yellow, red or brown stuff. I know it comes from the plant fats and other ingredients. As long as its safe to smoke its fine by me, I am not a crystal purist or looking for the whitest stuff possible. Have had some powerful experiences from brown goo so that's fine as well. Just looking to keep most of the yield in tact, so trying to go with the least messy way.
2: Because some of it is goo and some of it is crystal, I cannot weigh it to be sure what the exact quantity of sodiumcarb to add to base it via paste n pull technique. So I am considering maybe disolving it all in water and then drying it on a petri-dish and then evaporating to see what I end up with.
3: As you said, fumarates are more stable than freebase so may make sense to store them as such. I could combine these with other fumarates I may get from future extractions and then freebase when I need, as I have plenty of freebase from the earlier part of the extraction to go by for a while. But to store these I would like them to be more powdery and less gooey, is there a way to evap them in such a way as to make sure i get less goo in the end?
4: At some point I would like to try pharma, combined with harmala extracts. So I am wondering if the fumarates I have are food-safe, given they have been extracted with Xylene (which is known to be toxic). I have been drying them for a couple of weeks so not sure if traces of xylene are still in the goo. If these are not orally administrable than I'd be more inclined to freebase them.
5: If I follow your advice, which seems sensible and reasonable, then I have a couple of other questions in what you stated. What NPS can I use for the 2-step process, I am afraid if I use the Xylene again I would have just gone round in a circle and have to evap this disgusting liquid down with a chance of making a mess. If I use Naphtha, I might be loosing some of the more 'jungle' bits of the spice? - this is fine too though. I am not sure if i can find heptane or hexane at this point. I have Naphtha, 99% IPA (which i know disolves in water so not good for sep), and 99% Acetone (which the paste and pull tek advises to use but you advise against.
6: Correct me if I am wrong, you suggest add clean water with pH of 9 or higher, that would make it basic water so how can it be clean and basic for this step to work?
7: Re: DirtyT's point about soda ash not being a good base. I have Sodium Hydroxide as well, would that work as well for the basing step or does it have its disadvantages?
Thanks for all your help! I know a lot of this info is out there already but piecing together all the info with all the contradictory bits can be confusing as hell to a non-chem noob. So appreciate the advice very much
I'll try to get some petri dishes in the mean time
