spice troubles

[thomash]

so a foaf is living abroad in brazil for some time now.

he has extracted spice many times successfully while living in europe.

since he has been living in brazil he hasn't managed to extract any decent spice.

the first time he bought bark that was trunk bark and not root bark. this yielded a little of an oily substance that had an effect. but he only got a very small amount from it. so wiser from this experience he found another vendor who ships root bark.

now he has tried a straight to base and a standard marsofold a/b extraction on it and is still only getting very little of an oily substance that smells of spice. but far too little and in this oily consistency that only starts looking orange when it is scraped up.

he doesn't know what mistake he is doing since he has been succesful in the past with the same methods.

some details of the last attempt (maybe you can spot something that is wrong):

he put 400g of finely shredded mhrb into a 3L mason jar and poured two litres of water + roughly 200-300g of lye onto it. the whole thing was mixed up a bit and let sit for about 3 hours. then 250ml of naphtha (clipper lighter fluid) were poured into the container. the whole thing was shaken a bit and upended once every 30-40 minutes for about 3 hours. then the naphtha was siphoned off and put into a mason jar. this was put into the freezer.

in the past succesful attempts the liquid always became extremely cloudy after a short time and crystals would fall out almost immediately. this wasn't happening here even after a few hours of wait so the naphtha was poured onto a larger tray and let evaporate a little. afterwards it was put back in the freezer and then larger orangeish clumps were forming that were swimming in the solution... he had never experienced this. the crystals always fell to the ground previously. after removing them he let them dry and ended up with little of an oily spice smelling substance.

what's going wrong here?

1) could the root bark be of bad quality? the vendor seems very legit
2) could the lye or the naphtha be at fault?
3) could it be external conditions such as higher humidity in brazil?
4) or is the spice god just unhappy with him?

he's itching to get some quality spice and is feeling very frustrated.

[thomash]

here's an image from the last naphtha pull. it's evaporated for 3 hours in the sun and i don't know if any more will happen to it. it's just this oil that smells of spice.

[Caljet666]

Swim would say that it is either the bark or the naphtha at fault here. Swim suggests finding the MSDS sheet for the lighter fluid so you can be sure what is in it.

[thomash]

so the vendor just assured my friend that during this season the mhrb has 0.5%-1% of dmt.

it must be the naphtha then. he's trying with zippo instead now. but the zippo fluid with which he previously was successful isn't available. there is only a newer version that supposedly burns better with less odor. he is hoping that it will work as well as the older one.

i will post back when i hear how it went. in the meantime is there anything else obvious that he could be doing wrong?

[Caljet666]

It could just be fats maybe. Swims never extracted MHRB so he's not sure of their fats content. The acacias he's used to are loaded with them and the straight to base tek on them will only produce an orange oil.

[Defiance]

Not much fat in MHRB. It could be the solvent, I've had poor results with lighter fluid and Coleman fuel and much better with VM&P naptha. When in doubt try to get some heptane. Naptha can be a mix of high boiling solvents, heptane is always just heptane.

The humidity could effect crystal formation but probably not overall yield.

[Caljet666]

One thing to remember with heptane is to have it HOT. Cold heptane won't pull for shit. As close to boiling as possible. Swim gets his so close that sometimes when he siphons it off the reduced pressure causes it to boil into the siphon tube.

[thomash]

so my friends latest evaporation of the previous naphtha is constantly producing these brown/red gunky bits that fall out. it's clear and then after a little more evaporates new bits like this form.

i'm wondering could this be something similar to the much talked about jungle spice? and the lighter fluid he used is more similar to toluene or something?

[thomash]

so these are the kind of types of spice he has been extracting. the brown/reddish one with a different type of lighter fluid than the other two.

what do you guys think? could the brown/reddish one be jungle spice?

[thomash]

forgot the image

[Caljet666]

It is possible that the red one is jungle spice. Perhaps, and swim is only speculating
here, your solvent pulls too well. If that is the case it would be pulling too much
of the shit that you don't want.

Is shellite available to you? To experiment swim suggests dissolving your extracts in
boiling shellite and he thinks that most of the crap you don't want won't dissolve so
then you could filter and freeze precip.