Frustration!!!

[nnDiMiTri]

I have done several successful extractions with a friend and several on my own with the modified Kavinski STB tek.
I am in Peru now and lye here is diluted due to the drug trade, I am trying to adjust my recipe to compensate for the lack of sodium hydroxide with caustic soda and to compound a simple pH issue, I cannot for find litmus paper anywhere...
I have just finished my 1st serious extraction and the results are nada.
I know there is little advice that will help right now other than finding or making pH strips... I just wanted to bitchalittle. ;^)

 

[Bastiaan]

Order a PH meter from an online store or better yet, order some NaOH from overseas. Is the NaOH there so diluted that you can't make enough of a basic solution? Can't you evap some of the solution to get it more concentrated?

 

[nnDiMiTri]

I am waiting on my foreign resident visa to clear before ordering online because customs here will charge me taxes almost the equivalent of the cost for anything shipped in, 1 more month.
I have considered ordering NaOH but it is a reagent for cocaine and customs opens every package entering the country, I don't need to be on that list...
I will impatiently wait and try other avenues till I have the ability to order online again.

 

[Noman]

I ran across this elsewhere:

"How to easily make sodium hydroxide

Here's how: put two bowls side by side fill each one with a super-saturated salt solution(NaCl).Use rock salt(any pharmacy)cause table salt is iodized.Bridge the two bowls with a rag or towel that's wet with the same saturated solution(to cunduct electricity from one bowl to the other)put the positive of a car battery charger with carbon or graphite rod connected to it in one bowl and the negative also with carbon or graphite rod in the other one.Power up,you'll see bubbles coming off the carbon rods.I don't remember if it's the positive or the negative,but one of the two is chlorine gas(very toxic so do this outdoors) that's the salt losing the chlorine atoms and they're being replaced by oxygen and hydrogen(OH) that are binding to the sodium giving you NaOH and what was a salt solution is now a lye solution.evap it and collect your lye crystals .Leave the power on till no more bubbles come off the rods by the way.It's as easy as that"

Haven't tried it myself, but hope it helps.
If one has plenty of lye, there is no need to measure pH - just use a gram per gram of plant material for an STB, or take the solution to slippy black and add another 25% for an A/B.

 

[JustinNed]

phenol red will work to get an average rating on pH levels.

 

[vibrancy3]

Well if you can order from overseas!

Swim suggests trying ''The Soap Kitchen'' (they do 500g 4 £2.80)



just type ''The Soap Kitchen' into goggle.......