For the love of god I need some assistance

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

Your cold packs, what do they say for ingredients? I looked high and low and couldn't find an ammonium nitrate cold pack. They haven't made them in over a decade. Ifmthey say calcium ammonium nitrate or urea, they won't work. Switch that for ammonium sulphate or ammonium Lewis acid of any kind really

 

[SauceySockss]

in my process, I do the following (if you care, if not i apologize for the unnecessary information)

-measure out the coleman fuel (all of this is written down btw, and I dont have it handy to be 100 percent accurate right now but I have accurate measurements written down)
-put it into soda stream bottle
-measure ammonium, put it into soda stream bottle
-strip batteries, place into separate container of coleman fuel to preserve it.
-take blended up pseduo, place into soda stream
-measure lye, insert into soda stream
-take lithium, insert into soda stream
-kick start reaction with a tiny tiny tiny tiny amount of water and cap immediately.
-swirl, not shake until mixture starts rolling hard
-waiting as long as possible before burping
-shake the *****er like hell, burp, repeat, continue until all the lithium turns bronze
-filter through cotton balls, and a series of coffee filters into a new container
-gas the liquid with liquid fire and salt through tubing until it "snows"
-filter white stuff and dry

-end result is unusable trash. is it all because of the ammonium?? could i possibly take that trashy powder and put it into a new cook and have it work then? or is it useless and needs to be thrown out?

 

[SauceySockss]

I have had disaster strike quite a few times with the soda streams however. the little rubber gaskets on the lids, ive had mine literally tear up or partially dissolve, and once all the pressure releases at once, a volcano erupts. All but one time i am paying close attention and have a spare cap nearby where I can prevent catastrophe. one time it sprayed me with fuel and all over my garage. THANK GOD nothing decided to ignite or get angry or I would have been super crispy.

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Yeah I ruined my favorite pair of camo pants and a hoodie, somehow I splattered myself with H2So4 and didn't think much of it. Next time I saw those clothes they were in tatters like a horde of moths got em'. Had a drop roll over the backside of my hand and didn't think much of that either, that turned into an ill scar.. H2So4 is pretty gnarly.. everything else just kinda burns and gets irritated for a long duration. I haven't tried making gas with HCl+CaCl2 yet... perhaps next time.

So, last week, I did a box of SU-24's (10*240mg) [I noticed some strange things, I will elaborate] .. I improvised paint thinner instead of naptha/toluene... everything was kosher up until it was time to rinse the crank with acetone (cold, dry, of course.) The acetone dissolved all my crank.. and I was at a total loss as I wasn't expecting that. Thankfully I washed it into a clean dish to evap and see what's left, and that's just what we did.. I ended up with a horribly tiny yield of .4 of crystal ice - but that was the best ice I ever smoked, hands down. (I'm used to the mexi-racemic)

Yesterday I started a box of wal-phed (walgreens brand generic sudafed) 96*30mg=2.88g PSE - the 'red hots'. I opt for these pills as they provided my first success, but I've gotten these, the SU-24s and the walphed 12's (20*120mg = 2.4g PSE) to work, or atleast make snow upon gassing, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I know there was successful reduction to meth upon sampling.
Anyway, so I gassed this shit, everything came out fine, but I noticed this time, like when I did the SU-24's also, ALL the crank dissolved upon rinsing with acetone. So I let it dry and collected, and sampled some from here. Awful. Horrible taste, no activity. So now I went to xtalize with %99 IPA (dry) and I ended up with a similar product as with the acetone, reddish/brown/pink dirty color, funny solvent smell, awful taste, very acidic for some reason, most importantly... no psychoactivity. Kinda irritated at this point...

So I went back to the drawing board... I decided to A/B whatever the ***** my 'product' was. Also, I took the old fuel, gassed it, nothing precipitated. So I threw it back in with the reaction mash. I threw it all in a coffee grinder with the fuel and made sure to pulverize/blend superbly. After I placed this mixture on a hotplate on low/mid for about an hour with stirring here and there. I added the base of whatever my 'product' was to the fuel mixture being filtered/dried. I gassed that whole mess again, this time the precipitate was much more promising-looking. So I filtered it, nothing stayed behind ...despite seeing solids. There was precip on the inside of the gassing vessel also, which I collected with an acetone rinse. So I am working with the acetone rinse, of 'dissolved crank?' again. I decided to throw in some %99 IPA in the mix and just xtallize all at the same time. So it's sitting on my dish waiting to dry now. I'll let ya know how it comes out...

Any thoughts on this predicament, though?

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Sorry for late response...
So how did it come out? Well.... about as shitty as it did the first time. Why? I am not exactly positive. I used the generic wal-phed 96*30mg 'red hots', which I have had success with before. The difference this time was that it is summer instead of winter and I did not extract the pills with methanol before hand. I decided to just crush them up and throw them in the RV. The acetone wash dissolved all my crank, as with the SU-24s, but when I evaporated that, I was left with crap. With the SU-24s, I ended up with a little bit of some bomb ice. This time, however, nothing, so I don't know what went wrong.

As you can see, trying to dial this in to a solid working method has left me somewhat confused and frusterated. As much as I love the artistic and improvisational freedom and readyness/availability of this method.. I am starting to lean towards everyone elses position on the subject. "Just do it the right way with the RP/I2 method." ...Less guess work. Less variables. Less things that can go wrong. Certainly less dangerous and more 'new-bee' friendly.

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

@SauceySockss Yeah, the yellow bottles of HEET are the ones you want. They contain mostly methanol (with a little cyclohexene or something.) The methanol is what you want to use to clean/extract your pills, it seems to be the universal solvent for them and has always worked in my experience. Of course, you want to dry your methanol with Mg2SO4 or another dessicant. Distillation is always the best option.

As for a source of toluene. The Gumout brand carb and choke cleaner is one of the better options I have found. It contains: toluene, acetone and carbon dioxide. So, basically just spray or empty it all into a container and wash it with water a few times. Salty water/brine helps to break any emulsion. Again, distillation is the best option if you can.

@Frit Buchner I may have already mentioned this to you, if so, I apologize. I have found ammonium nitrate and water instant cold packs - the right ones! - from CVS, and only CVS. They don't always have them, and not at every location, but keep checking and you might get lucky. They are the CVS brand "instant cold packs." I grab them all whenever I see them anywhere. I've probably only come across 3/4 boxes at a few different locations across my county in the last year. So... they are still out there.. you just gotta look, and keep checking back... and keep trying different spots...

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

Wow, nice read here. You've documented a lot of goodness research. The reason everything you do in acetone tastes like shit is denotonium benzoate bitrex. It'sstandardin acetone now distill or pay big bucks.
You knowninjust posted about this in analytical how much stuff I distilled out of "100% acetone"

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Yea, I saw that - that was alot of shit left over for "%100 acetone" ... ya know? That's making me think twice about alot of shit I've probably been taking for granted. Assuming some of these things are more or less OK with some drying or whatever...

I think between that, and like I said, summer and winter, I know why all my crank keeps disappearing. I mention the seasons because of the difference in temperature, obviously, and also humidity here. I also forgot to add that there was some extra time taken in between steps when I had my initial success. I did my birch in a bottle and filtered and dried, or let sit and dry with epsom salts in the container with the reaction fuel instead of getting right to the gas. I believe I used a different acetone also - it was a %99 pure brand, which was dried and cooled for a longer amount of time than I normally have patience for. I basically brought everything to gas it, filter and wash in a backpack over to my buddies so I could do it in front of him. I pretty much did everything in the threshold of his back door - so half outside. So, I'm not too sure what the variable is in this situation - temperature, time or brand?

I remember when I gassed, that fuel didnt get all white and cloudy like I always see now. There were much bigger precipitates that sank to the bottom. These filtered right out, no problem. After that I washed with the acetone, and only so much rinsed away. So I was pretty excited to see those results for the first time, because I knew that was what I was looking for. The only reason I was able to get high recently was because I learned my lesson from before and washed into a clean dish to evaporate to see what was left - which, that time, happened to be everything. That was with brand name SU-24s and using paint thinner with some ether as fuel to boot.

I am rather disappointed and frusterated at my last failure with the wal-phed redhots. Mostly because I tried to duplicate what I did during the successful run, with the exception of extracting the pills first, actually, and because I utterly failed. Also because the smurfs I have get me suzy, of course they want to get high too, and I wouldn't have a problem If I was getting a solid gram or two of straight d-ice. So when I don't have anything to show for it, they think I'm being greedy or something and don't want to go anymore, even though I'm paying for everything anyway. So.. like I said, I'm probably going to be leaning towards RP/I2 cooks in the future in hopes of less wiggle room to ***** up, also probably some ma huang herb as my source for EP/PSE, granted I can get fair amount of something usable.

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I forgot to mention. I found a product at the supermarket called Alum. It is aluminum ammonium sulfate. Do we know if it will work for our SnB purposes, or if we can get it to work for our purposes somehow? If so, how?

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

I think aluminum ammonium sulfate it a no. You shouldnt give up, every time you try you learn succeed or fail. Clearly you want to do it and it's valuable and a lost art. I think it would kick ass to cock great dope in a pop bottle. I saw a couple of things that could be improved. If you read scientific chemistry, they are buying acs and reagent grade chemicals and distilling them, so usually probably. Definitely for a shake and bake because you might not be cleaning it I'll have to read it again it's a lot

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I mean, I'm not married to the shake and bake method. I just find it practical for the time being. Working with what is available around me. I won't be able to supply the need for ammonium indefinitely for the long term, especially for the time being. So I won't have a choice other than the HI route sooner or later, I have been stocking up on my match books and bottles of I2. Still missing some equipment and a good source for EP/PSE.

I have been dicking around for quite too long, frankly. I finally hit the point where I'm fed up and tired of dealing with everyone and everything and nothing is going to change or get better until I break off and do my own thing for a bit. So, I'm taking a little respite and I'm coming back with a vengeance. I meant to be prepared last year to get on for this year, but I ended up *****ing that up, believing all the sweet nothings everyone tells me. Too many people out here taking kindness for weakness and some more shit, people *****ing with my money, so on and so forth. Had enough of it. They think I need em' ... like I depend on them for what I need to do or something, they gonna find out the hard way that I will thrive left to my own devices. Well... they're gonna miss the bus.. that's all. Sad story, eh? Anyway, sorry for yapping...

Success or fail, I have learned alot about many different aspects to a few different things, of course, the knowledge and experience will runneth over into new cups. It's not that I'm "throwing in the towel" - I'll still work on dialing this in on the side, if only for posterity and maybe to go down as the latest and greatest SnB'er on the flat earth. I just really need to stop fooling around and get a few good successes and have some product to get rid of. I can't afford to not get any returns anymore... Lack of money is finally getting to the point, where, like I say.. I'm pissed. I've had all the money I needed to invest a few times over by now, but when I get it at $20-40 at a time, I can't hang onto it. So this is where that righteous anger, applied correctly, can be used to benefit me - help me re-evaulate my current situation and who my friends really are...

I guess alot of these OTC products have more surprises in them than we had anticipated, expected or, even..., were led to believe. "%100 acetone" ... Yea.. ***** off... everything left over in that pic was shit? - The dregs of the acetone distillation? That looked like almost 1/5 of the content. Sheesh...