If the pictures shown in this document are not visible you can go to
any of the following online forums to see the tech with photographs
but most will not include the information outlined about current
prices or web sites examples to show current prices because although
this document is not intended to promote any specific vendor, most
entheogen forums prohibit mentioning vendors to prevent spam
advertisements. I have written this for you, not for existing vendors
who as a group would surely like to prevent this information from
being posted because it could bite into their piece of the Salvia pie:

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/sho..sb=5&o=&fpart=1

http://forums.lycaeum.org/cgi-bin/u..ic&f=2&t=001364

http://www.ethnobotany-australia.ne..opic.php?t=2344

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An UNAUTHORIZED report and tell all of the secrets of making huge
amounts of money selling Salvia divinorum products online.

What is Salvia divinorum?

Salvia divinorum is used as a sacred medicine by indigenous shamanic
healers living in the mountainous Sierra Madre Oriental in the
northeastern corner of the Mexican State of Oaxaca. In Spanish, these
specialized healers are referred to as curanderos; in Mazatec these
people are called cho-ta-ci-ne ("one who knows"). Salvia divinorum is
primarily used in situations where the curanderos feels it is
necessary to travel into the supernatural world in order to discover
the true cause of the patient's trouble. It is used in a ceremonial
manner to induce a visionary trance state, within which it is possible
determine the underlying cause of disease and to learn what steps
should be taken to remedy such disease.

"The purpose of these sacraments is to purify, and to open the road.
When it opens, it's as clear as the blue sky, and the stars at night
are as bright as suns." — Aurelia Aurora Catarino (Mazatec shaman)

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How to Make Over 1,000 Percent Profit Selling Enhanced Salvia
Divinorum Leaf Online. Rare as it is, this is not an advertisement or
someone selling anything.

Welcome to the world of legal entheogens, the new psychedelic movement
speading across America. This document shows you how to make your own
Salvia divinorum products which are selling for many hundreds of
percent markup. If your interested in making money off of this rare
shamanic plant read on, there is still time for more vendors to make
enough money to retire on in just a few years of part time work:

The process outlined in this tech. can be used to extract and refine
salvinorin into a purity that is in the high 90 percentiles using
nothing but common household materials. It isn't necessary to go to
the extremes in the eight step process outlined in this tech. to
remove tannin impurity to make enhanced leaf, but for the purists it's
a delight to do it right which results in a very high purity extract
which previous to this tech. required the use of laboratory glass and
column chromatography to approach this purity and efficiency. Prior to
this process being publically made available on the net the price of
high purity salvinorin was from $5000.00 to $8,000.00 USD for a single
gram. Most vendors who sell high purity salvinorin are now getting
from $750.00 to $1,000.00 a gram, but costing only $65 dollars when
ordered in 10 kilo quantities direct from Mexico for the 500 grams (1
pound) of dried Salvia divinorum leaf required to extract that amount
of salvinorin. The cost of solvents needed to net a gram of white
purity powder should be half or less the cost of the leaf when
purchased from off the shelf retail sources. When concentrated back on
leaf a single gram of high purity salvinorin can make at least 80
grams of 6X enhanced leaf  which contains enough salvinorin in each
gram for at least 10 strong doses of this potent psychedelic selling
for close to 20 dollars or more a gram for a net profit of over
$1500.00 dollars from only a $100.00 dollar investment in leaf and a
single gallon of clean 99% medical grade Isopropanol, all which can be
easily accomplished over a single weekend of work. The amount of time
needed to extract and refine salvinorin into a gram of white
crystalline powder can be done with many long breaks between each step
in the process which is an easy way to make more money on one weekend
than most people make in an entire week of 8 hour days. The amount of
time required to extract and refine salvinorin, on a gram per gram
basis, can easily be reduced by a factor of ten or more when working
with large amounts of leaf because the same steps and nearly the same
amount of time is required regardless of extracting 500 grams or 5
kilograms of Salvia leaf.

Make no mistake that this write is meant as any kind of advertisement
or intended to be a draw customers to any of the web sites mentioned
in this article because with rare exception none of the vendors making
money from Salvia divinorum want this information to be circulated to
the general public who could potentially become competitors or worse
yet allow individuals to make their own enhanced leaf which would
cause them to loose business. Regardless of this information being
made available to anyone who wants it most people won't go to the
trouble of making their own standardized leaf and will buy it so I
don't think this tech will impact them that way. Techniques used to
extract and refine salvinorin had prior to been kept in strict secrecy
among a very few individuals who were selling tickets to Salvia-space
because they wanted to make sure the number of competitors with the
capability of making high quality standardized leaf would be kept to a
minimum. Many had tried to get this kind of information from them and
were denied, I was one of those people and due to the amount of work
it took for me to find easy methods of isolating salvinorin on my own
I am now making this available to the public as I wish it had been
made available to me. The stated reasons of the old boys on the block
against making salvinorin isolation techniques publically available
were usually words to the effect that if competition was kept low the
price for enhanced leaf would be kept so high it would keep enhanced
leaf out of the hands of adolescents which they believed would lead to
trouble faster than anything else, which I don't disagree is a real
potential problem but secretly and more importantly for most (in their
minds) they knew keeping this information restricted kept their
pockets lined with gold. At the same time these online vendors were
reporting to others they were not make much from their Salvia sales
they were really making many thousands of dollars a week selling
nothing but enhanced leaf and due to the increasing demand are still
making more money than ever regardless of increased competition.
Within the industry salvinorin is referred to as green gold, but the
truth is the value of salvinorin exceeds gold by many times to be far
more valuable than any precious metal. Just three years ago salvinorin
was so expensive that it was selling for hundreds of times the price
of gold per ounce, up to $200,000.00 dollars an ounce in high purity
form. Today, the price for salvinorin has dropped to close to
$20,000.00 dollars an ounce from some of the more competitive vendors
but probably won't drop much further and may even rise due to the ever
increasing demand. It is important to understand that no one is
selling pure salvinorin for direct use as a drug because this
psychoactive is far too potent to be used that way and should only be
used if greatly diluted on leaf to limit the amount of salvinorin
ingested to a milligram or less for most people. Some individuals are
insanely sensitive to salvinorin while others are almost completely
insensitive, but the average dose of salvinorin when smoking enhanced
leaf is often a milligram or less at a time for most individuals and
never more than 2 milligrams for most of the white knuckle
salvianaughts who want to push themselves to the furthest limits.

To see the current prices for a gram of enhanced Salvia divinorum leaf
do a google search under the term "Salvia divinorum" to find links to
various vendors to see the prices for a single gram of salvinorin
enhanced leaf. The amount of salvinorin contained in enhanced leaf
varies depending upon the "X" factor of the product but due to the
extreme potency of salvinorin is always a small fraction of the total
weight. Average potency Salvia divinorum leaf contains 2.5 mg of
salvinorin per gram of leaf. If making 6X standardized leaf you are
adding 12.5 mg of salvinorin back to raw leaf so that the total amount
of salvinorin contained in a single gram is 15 milligrams. 6X enhanced
Salvia divinorum leaf contains less than 1.5% salvinorin by weight and
is currently selling between 15 to 20 dollars a gram which cost less
than a dollar for the leaf needed to make it. When ordering Salvia
divinorum leaf in bulk quantities direct from Mexico the salvinorin
needed to make 6X enhanced leaf costs a nickle or less a milligram,
but when used to enhance leaf can be sold for more than a dollar a
milligram. Of course, the solvent needed to extract and refine
salvinorin from leaf to make standardized enhanced leaf is also a
factor but should not be more than 1/2 the cost of the leaf. 20X
enhanced leaf is currently selling for as much as 50 dollars a gram
which only requires extracting 25 grams of average potency raw leaf
which costs as little as three dollars when purchased in bulk
quantities for a net profit of over 45 dollars above and beyond your
cost for leaf and solvent.

If you want to check the price of Salvia divinorum products from three
fearce competitors go to www.shamanic-extracts.com - www.iamshaman.com
or www.ethnogarden.com as good references for three of the the lowest
priced suppliers of Salvia divinorum products today, although one
vendor known as the Salvia Buyers Club has been selling enhanced
Salvia leaf for far less than those three. Although SBC is not
currently offering "standardized" leaf their product is very good and
requires very little work to produce compared to standardized leaf
which is why they can sell it so cheap. The process that SBC uses is
very simple, i.e. they extract raw dried leaf by simply stirring 100
grams of leaf into solvent, letting it soak for a period of days and
then later evaporating the extraction solvent onto a smaller amount of
fresh dried leaf to greatly increase the amount of salvinorin
contained in each gram which produces a highly effective product, just
as effective as standardized leaf, but due to the extra amount of
chlorophyll which is also concentrated into the product when making
non-standardized leaf most people cannot hack smoking anything
stronger than 6 to 8X or the leaf becomes too full of Chlorophyll
waxes to make an easy smoking leaf. However, even 5X non-standardized
enhanced leaf is very effective for most people and in my opinion is
the strongest anyone new to Salvia divinorum should attempt using,
even then only when under the supervision of a responsible and sober
adult. The difference between standardized and non-standardized leaf
is mainly one thing, with standardized leaf the salvinorin is
extracted from leaf into high purity and then weighed so that the
amount of the psychoactive concentrated back onto leaf is accurately
known where non-standardized leaf is just an approximation which may
be somewhat weaker or even much stronger than a given X factor of
standardized leaf if extra potent leaf was used. Salvinorin content in
leaf has been reported to vary from 2 to 4 mg or more per gram of leaf
and because of this non-standardized leaf can end up being stronger
than standardized and usually is because most people making
non-standardized leaf add more extract back to the leaf than required
to assure full potency. Non-standardized leaf is a good thing, but
there are benefits to standardizing method to make enhanced leaf
because when using nearly pure salvinorin to enhance your leaf you can
add as much of it back to the leaf as you want, all the way up to 40X
and beyond if desired without adding large amounts of other impurities
from the leaf which would make it impossible to smoke at that level of
concentration if you weren't using refined salvinorin. However, when
making enhanced leaf which is that strong the extremely small amount
of leaf required to dose with would require as little as 10 milligrams
of leaf to get a full milligram of salvinorin which is far too small
an amount of material because individuals could easily get too large a
dose when trying to load their screened pipe with an estimated dose of
something that small yet increadibly strong, far too easy to load 100%
or more weight and not even realize it. Regardless, for the love of
money some people will sell anything without any thought of the
possible consquences to their customers who could easily get too much.
I don't believe anything stronger than 20X should be made for sale to
the public unless packaged into carefully measured individual doses
and only then if the proper warnings are given regarding dosages and
possible effects, something that the individuals selling leaf as non
human consumables or drugs to dodge law suits if something goes wrong
cannot do without admitting the true intentions of their products use.

The vendors I have mentioned in this document was done completely
without their knowledge, only doing so as a good example of current
prices for quality Salvia divinorum products, although many vendors
are able to sell the same exact quality products for twice the price
or more. At the time of this writing at least one of the vendors
mentioned in this document has disclaimers against the human
consumption of any of their products which are only sold as incense
etc. as a way to limit liabilities, but people are completely
disregarding those disclaimers which provides a very sweet position
for many vendors who use that statement to make it possible to both
sell the most potent natural psychedelic in the world while at the
same time limiting their own liabilities, slick! Although, there are
no regulations regarding the sale or use of Salvia divinorum or
salvinorin products for human consumption to adults in the USA as long
as they are not sold as substitutes to illicit drugs there is no law
against it from the FDA through the DEA, salvinorin is not scheduled
or regulated in any way by the federal government. However, due to the
intoxicating effects of salvinorin some localities have city laws
enacted to restrict the sale of Salvia divinorum to minors, but
federal law does not exists to prohibit the sale of Salvia divinorum
or salvinorin products in the United States.

A few of the vendors selling Salvia divinorum products online are
spreading the rumor that Salvia divinorum will soon be scheduled in
the United States in an effort to create a fear that it won't be
available soon to both get people to order more product and to
discourage competition, but if you read the following article by
IamShaman.com you will see that they don't believe scheduling of
Salvia divinorum is likely any time soon:
http://www.entheogen.com/articles/2004/salvialegal.html -  The good
people at IamShaman.com are a great example of how much Salvia
divinorum can do for someone who wants to start their own online
business, I taught him how to refine salvinorin just three years ago
using a similar process which wasn't nearly as fine tuned as what I
have documented in this tech. today and regardless of the competition
created by releasing this information to the public he was still able
to spring board that company off of his sales of standardized Salvia
divinorum leaf into one of the largest entheogen vending sites on the
net, all operating out of his own house which I have been told employs
at least three individuals to keep up with packing the orders making
what I assume must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
today from the number of orders I see being generated on his web site,
but don't look to them to confirm this because the amount of money
being made off of Salvia divinorum is a closely held secret by most of
the vendors to disuade further competition, but to give you an idea of
the amount being sold many tons of dried leaf are shipped into the US
from Mexico every year which when processed to make 5 to 10X enhanced
leaf there must be hundreds of thousands of grams of extra strength
enhanced leaf being produced every year which adds up to a huge amount
of money from very little investment for a relatively small amount of
vendors for the amount of dried Salvia divinorum leaf being shipped
into the USA.

Enough on the background! To the information which could make you a
very well off individual in just a few months of sales if you build a
first rate web site and know how to advertise your product by placing
adds on google and amazon.com and other search engines so that people
can link to your product. You can currently sell raw unprocessed
Salvia divinorum leaf on ebay as long as it is only listed as incense
and is not specified to be a specific potency as enhanced or "X"
factor leaf which is intended for human consumption. Ebay is a great
web site to sell raw dried leaf as leader to your regular web site
where the potent products are sold at much higher prices. I would join
in selling enhanced leaf and tincture myself if I didn't have personal
issues with selling this product to individuals under the age of 21
and already busy with my own enterprises which are already earning me
a good income:

Home Made Salvia Divinorum Standardized Leaf and Tincture Tech. ver.
4.8 September 01, 2004

Although written as an instructional document the following is offered
for informational purposes only. This extraction and refinement FAQ
was written by a non-professional, I'm not an organic chemist and
don't work in a field related to botany or chemistry. The solvents
mentioned in this document are very flammable and can be easily
ignited by red hot surfaces, open flame, electric or static spark!
Avoid risking sparks from metallic utensils, desktop or computer fans,
and don't try to evaporate solvents in closed areas. This document
does not contain information related to the safe handling of solvents
or their proper use for the manufacture of human consumable products.
The use of either crude or refined salvinorin should never be
attempted, it is far too potent to eye ball a sub-milligram dose of
salvinorin which can only be accurately done if using a analytical
balance with an accuracy within a tenth of a milligram or better
costing many hundreds of dollars or more. See
http://www.sagewisdom.org/caution.html for cautions against the use of
crude to pure salvinorin which has very real dangers created from
becoming heavily intoxicated when attempting to dose with salvinorin
itself.

The following extraction information comes from many hundreds of hours
of extractions to find better ways to extract salvinorin without the
need of an organic laboratory or expensive glassware. Much of what I
have found was through trial and error extractions until I found
techniques leading to a method which works very well. I am happy to
offer this information to anyone who wants it for their own personal
use or business as many have, the only thing I ask in return is that
you keep Salvia divinorum away from adolescents, use it in a safe
responsible manner and please don't equate Salvia Divinorum with
illicit plants or drugs. Although Salvia divinorum is known as the
most potent "natural" psychedelic it is far less potent and shorter
acting than synthesized man made hallucinogens. For most individuals
the psychedelic effects of smoking moderate to relatively large
amounts of Salvia divinorum or enhanced leaf are very fleeting lasting
only a very few minutes and when used as a tincture can be difficult
to induce at all. Although I have never heard of anyone being harmed
by any kind of toxicological effect from the use of Salvia divinorum,
I do not casually recommend its use to anyone as this requires your
own research to know if it is right for you. Personally, although I
have been intensely interested in Salvia divinorum I have not used
this entheogen but twice in a period of close to two years and even
then in very moderate amounts because even though the visions it can
induce are often awesome and extremely interesting, I now find that I
have no desire to do so on a regular basis and take my time between
journeys to fully integrate each experience. Many individuals who try
Salvia divinorum find it to be far too much to handle and won't do so
twice (especially if having used too much the first time), but a few
find this plant to be their ally and are fascinated to the point where
they use Salvia divinorum many times in a period of a few months, but
almost all taper off to weeks and then months between uses as I have,
now waiting close to a year between journeys.

Salvia divinorum is not something you can use to get "high" with and
doesn't produce that kind of effect and should only be used for
introspective meditation or for spiritual pursuits to widen the doors
of your inner perception, never as a joy ride for the psychedelic
effects or shared with anyone who might profane this sacred shamanic
plant as some kind of substitute for illicit street drugs.  Although
this plant is not currently regulated or controlled by the US federal
government my firm belief is that it should be restricted from
individuals under the age of 21 in the same way that tobacco and
Alcohol are restricted to minors because when Salvia divinorum is
taken in large amounts it can be a very strong intoxicant, a sacred
intoxicant yes, but intoxicating in much the same way that Alcohol can
cause reduction of fine motor skills and should never be used in a
public place or prior to operating machinery or driving unless three
or more hours have passed since use. Salvia divinorum should only be
used while under the supervision of a responsible, experienced and
sober adult, especially if you are new to Salvia divinorum and
inexperienced in the possible effects. Don't assume an amount suitable
for you is the right amount for someone else. Some individuals are
extremely sensitive to Salvia divinorum while others will have no
effect from it at all and require the use of enhanced leaf to obtain
marginal effect. Never offer Salvia divinorum to individuals who have
not been completely informed of the the possible effects. Never
attempt to smoke Salvia divinorum products enhanced with large amounts
of salvinorin or even tincture unless you have slowly worked your way
up to that level and know your own sensitivity and what to expect.
This document does not contain information regarding possible effects
and must be researched from other sources to make an informed choice
through knowing the potential risks of being light to strongly
intoxicated by this plant and whether Salvia divinorum is right for
you.

Extracting Dried Salvia Divinorum Leaf in Whole, Crushed or Powdered
Form:

When I first started extracting Salvia divinorum leaf with Acetone I
found that it didn't seem to make any difference whether the leaf was
whole, crushed or even finely powdered, regardless I found that
salvinorin was extracted from leaf from whole to finely powdered with
the same efficiency. Since Acetone worked so well with whole or
crushed leaf my assumption was that most, if not all of the salvinorin
was coating the outside of the leaf instead of inside the leaf, either
that, or Acetone was somehow able to efficiently draw the salvinorin
out of the interior leaf membranes. Daniel Siebert recently published
a paper confirming my belief that salvinorin is concentrated on the
outside of the leaf, because of this it isn't necessary to powder the
leaf to be able to efficiently extract salvinorin using any solvent
which salvinorin can be dissolved into, but I like to either finely
crush the leaf or powder it to reduce the volume of solvent needed to
completely cover the leaf with an extra amount of fluid volume to make
it easy to stir the leaf in it.

The following is as simple as it gets to make a gram of 5X enhanced
leaf.

1. Pour Acetone into a container of 6 grams of leaf and stir for ten
minutes

2. Pour Acetone off of leaf onto one gram of unextracted leaf and
evaporate all Acetone while leaf is present in it.

Wha-la! Enhanced leaf.

Note: Due to extraction inefficiencies of only washing the leaf
through one time an extra amount of leaf is required to make up for
losses when using this super simple method. Do not extract from a
larger ratio of leaf to enhanced leaf or you will end up with a very
gummy leaf which produces too much smoke for most people.

The following was written for 100 to 250 gram extraction of dried
Salvia divinorum leaf to make high quality Standardized leaf:

WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE CRUDE OR REFINED SALVINORIN AS A DRUG.
IT IS FAR TOO POTENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN IN CRYSTAL FORM. 5X Enhanced
leaf is less than 1.5% Salvinorin by weight.

This process will work with any amount of leaf if you scale the amount
of solvent used to refine the extract to smaller amounts. For example;
if extracting from 25 grams of leaf and you want to purify your
extract to white colored salvinorin, use no more than 1/4 to 1/8 the
amount of 99% IPA when removing Chlorophyll impurities. The following
process can be used to extract and refine salvinorin into a purity
that is in the high 90 percentiles. It isn't necessary to go to these
extremes to remove tannin impurity to make enhanced leaf but for the
purists it's a delight to do it right which results in a very high
purity extract which previous to this tek required the use of
laboratory glass and column chromatography to approach this purity and
efficiency:

1. Extract finely crushed leaf using room temperature Acetone
completely covering the leaf with fluid in a ratio of at least 1/2
crushed leaf to 1/2 Acetone three separate times for at least three
minutes each time (longer if desired, but not necessary). If using 99%
Isopropanol/IPA or 98% Ethanol Alcohol extract finely crushed leaf at
least five times over for no less than five minutes each time with a
ratio of 1/3 fine crushed leaf to 2/3 Isopropanol or Ethanol. Whether
extracting with Acetone, Isopropanol or high proof Ethanol or shake
thoroughly stir the leaf into the solvent the entire time

Note: This will work with whole unbroken leaf just as well, crushing
or powdering reduces the amount of solvent needed to cover the leaf.
When extracting whole or broken leaf use only as much solvent as is
necessary to completely cover the leaf. These figures are
approximates, a somewhat smaller ratio of solvent to leaf or
shortening the amount of time extracting the leaf by a minute each
time shouldn't significantly impact the extraction efficiency whether
using Acetone or Alcohol, but longer extraction periods will assure
maximum extraction efficiency. If using 99% Isopropanol or high proof
Ethanol warming them to 100-120 degrees F will make these two Alcohols
more efficient for extracting salvinorin compared to when at room
temperature but produce far more vapors with added danger due to any
kind of static or electric spark etc. which can ignite vapors.
Salvinorin has been reported to remain nearly as solvent to pure
Ethanol when chilled as when at room temperature, but when heated will
increase solubility enough to be well worth it.

2. After completing the outlined number of extractions to the same
batch of leaf thoroughly wash the wet leaf through twice more with
fresh Acetone (or what ever extraction solvent your using) to further
remove residuals. This is done to dilute out all of the old solvent
remaining in the wetted leaf which could still contain some of the
salvinorin. At this point your done with the leaf might want to place
all of your previously extracted leaf into a jar with solvent for a
long term extraction to get what ever amount of salvinorin that might
have remained behind in the leaf which should be very little if any,
especially if having used Acetone. Re-extract the leaf as long as you
like, but keep it in the dark to prevent any loss of salvinorin from
long term exposure to UV light which can destroy a portion of the
salvinorin while in solvents.

3. Combine the solvent from all extractions and last washes, remove
all leaf and fine leaf particles, filter tannin sediments from solvent
or let the solvent stand undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours to allow
enough time for most of these sediments to settle out of the fluid.
While waiting for the ultra-fine tannin particles to settle cover your
container and store in a cool dark place to both reduce evaporation
and to prevent possible losses due to interaction of light. Once you
have waited at least twelve hours for the tannin to settle out of the
fluid slowly pour the extraction solvent off of the fine brown tannin
sediments which have settled to the bottom of the container, being
careful to handle the container very slowly without jarring or
sloshing the fluid to prevent the fine particles from being stirred up
into the fluid. I don't recommend trying to pour out the last ounce or
two of solvent because a portion of the tannin will usually flow out
with the last of the fluid. Although, when leaving a small portion of
the fluid behind a dilute portion of the salvinorin is still in it you
can recover it by adding a few more ounces of fresh solvent to the
fluid and vigorously swirling the tannin into the solvent for a couple
of minutes to make sure to get any that might be left in it too, then
waiting another 12-24 hours to settle again before pouring the fluid
off again. Of course, you will have to leave the last bit of fluid
behind the second time too.

Note: I have tried using paper coffee filters to remove tannin from
the extraction solvent, but even after pouring the extraction solvent
through paper filters stacked three ply several times a fair amount of
the tannin particles were still able to get through the papers. A
filter made of cotton balls in a glass tube might work better than
paper filters, but I haven't tried it to know. Because the amount of
solvent used will completely dissolve and hold far more than the
amount of salvinorin extracted there is no fear of salvinorin falling
out of the fluid, only the tannin impurity will fall to the bottom of
the container, but these tannins should be saved for further
processing later by swirling the sediments into fresh solvent and let
to settle out once more be be sure that none of the salvinorin was
left behind in them.

4. After the extraction fluid is poured off of and separated from the
brown tannin sediments, completely evaporate the extraction solvent.
This is best done using a large flat pan so that the fluid volume will
spread out much further than when using a bowl because the shallower
the pan the larger the surface area of the fluid, speeding the rate of
evaporation requiring far less time than if using a deep bowl. You can
increase the evaporation rate even further by using a fan to blow air
across the solvent with enough force to cause ripples on the surface
of the fluid, but not so much airflow that droplets start taking to
the air carrying away any amount of your precious extract. If you live
in a buggy part of the world covering the evaporation container with a
fine mesh screen which will both allow air to flow through and keep
bugs out might be necessary. A full gallon of 99% Isopropanol can be
evaporated in under eight hours with this method and a gallon of
Acetone in four hours or less. Due to rapid evaporation of Acetone,
condensation from the air can cause an ounce or more of water to
remain in the container which won't evaporate quickly. Also, if you
have extracted leaf using 99% IPA or 98% Ethanol in addition to water
from condensation you will have a percent or more of water remaining
after the solvent spirits are completely gone. This water is usually a
yellow color due to tannins dissolved into it which is something you
don't want in your extract, so once you have evaporated all of the
solvent off and are left with only water pour it off, being careful
that none of the green particles of extract go out with it. Leave the
extract in the evaporation container and completely dry by placing in
an oven set to 150 degrees F. (as long as not hint of solvent remains,
otherwise the vapors could cause a fire).

Note: Although a large flat glass cassarole cooking pan works very
well to evaporate the extract into, I like to use a non-stick
Teflon(R) coated cooking pan over any other kind because once all of
the solvent is has been evaporated off and your left with a waxy
extract in the bottom of the container it's easier to scrape it all
into a pile using a thin piece of plastic (not metal which will gouge
the Teflon coating). Also, when the fluid level is being reduced by
evaporation thin films of relatively high purity salvinorin are always
deposited on the sides of the container which are more easily removed
when using Teflon(r) coated evaporation containers. Test non-stick
pans with clean Acetone before pouring you extraction solvent into the
container to make sure that the solvent won't affect the coating,
depending upon the manufacturer the non-stick coating of some pans
might not be up to the job and rather than risk contaminating your
extract it is best to test. Acetone should not be used in jars using
tops with rubber seals unless manufactured for such use as Acetone
will melt many rubbers and plastics. Using either Isopropanol or
Ethanol Alcohol shouldn't be a problem for any kind of non-stick pan
and most food container seals.

4.5 This step is optional and can be skipped, or used to replace step
six. If you want to go to extremes incorporate both this step and step
six together to assure a maximum purity extract. At this point you
could remove more of the tannin from the extract if all hint of
solvent has been evaporated off but the extract is still water wet
from either condensation of water due to rapid evaporation of solvent,
or wet from the 1% of water contained in 99% Isopropanol if that
solvent was used to extract the leaf. This extra step will only work
if the extract is still wet right after all of the solvent has been
evaporated from the extract but is still moist and has not dried yet.
Scrape up all of your water wetted extract and place it into a cup of
room temperature water and stir for a few minutes, breaking the
particles up by hand as best you can into small particles by working
all of the clumps out of the extract solids using your fingers.
Depending upon how much water is used it can take on a light yellow to
dark brown color. Once your done working the extract into the water
let it set still undisturbed for an hour or for however long it takes
for the particles to all settle to the bottom of the container and
then pour the water off, add more water and stir the extract into it
again. Keep doing this until the water no longer takes on any color
and then completely dry the extract in an oven set to 150 degrees F.
until no hint of mosture remains.

Note: This step will not work once the extract has dried into a waxy
consistency because water will not cut through the wax once dry and
cannot be reconstituted with water to produce the same consistency
which will allow the water to get to the tannin after drying. The
extract that has dried on the sides of the evaporation container that
is either a fine crust of high purity salvinorin, or waxy deposits
cannot be washed with water and should be scraped off and saved for
step 5., if necessary using Naphtha to remove these residuals from the
sides of the container. It is important to remove all of the extract
from the evaporation container so that it is completely clean as these
films can contain a substantial portion of your yield. Save all of the
water used to remove tannin and check it in a few hours to see if more
salvinorin has settled out of the fluid.

5. Once every hint of solvent has been evaporated out and the extract
is completely dry of moisture pour in four or more ounces of pure
Naphtha directly into the evaporation container (or if having already
scraped it out of a large evaporation container transfer all of the
extract into a smaller container so that you can work with it better).
Completely dissolve all clumps of extract or wax into the Naphtha so
that only fine granules remain in the fluid. Next, pour all of the
Naphtha and every bit of the extract into a pint sized or smaller
glass jar, setting it aside undisturbed for an hour or more. What your
waiting for is for the ultra-fine salvinorin particles that are
stirred up in the Naphtha to settle to the bottom of the glass which
can take as much a hour or more for most of them to fall out of the
fluid, this works with Naphtha because salvinorin is insoluble to this
solvent. After waiting for the salvinorin particles to settle then
slowly, taking great care not to let any of the particles flow out
with the fluid pour off the dark green Naphtha leaving the crude
salvinorin extract in the bottom of the glass. Next add more clean
Naphtha to the jar and mix the extract into the fluid for five minutes
and set aside for another hour or more before pouring off the Naphtha
again. Continue using Naphtha to remove Chlorophyll waxes from the
extract until the fluid becomes a light translucent green color, at
this point it has become ineffective for removing additional
Chlorophyll. When done completely pour off every last drop of Naphtha
and completely dry the extract so that no hint of Naphtha remains.

Note: Since salvinorin is insoluble to Naphtha you don't need to worry
about using too much, use as much as you like but take care to wait
long enough for the ultra fine crystalline salvinorin particles to
fall to the bottom of the container before pouring the fluid off.
Using several ounces of Naphtha at a time might require waiting
several hours for the majority of the salvinorin particles to settle
to the bottom of the container, but when using a small one ounce glass
most of them should settle in the first hour or so.

6. Although you won't see it the extract, it still contains an amount
of tannin. Once you have removed all of the waxy Chlorophyll compounds
that you can with Naphtha and the extract is dry, completely crush all
of your extract into as fine a powder as you can in a bowl with a
spoon and then pour in a few ounces or more of room temperature water,
stirring the extract into the water for a few minutes and then set
aside for an hour or for however long it takes for the particles to
all settle to the bottom of the container. After the particles of
crude salvinorin have settled pour all of the water off being careful
not to pour any of the extract solids out with it and then add more
water and stir again. As long as the water continues to take on a
slightly yellow or brown color continue washing with more water. If
using a cup or more of water at a time to dissolve small amounts of
tannin contained in the extract you might not see any change of water
color, but it will be doing the job. Once you are satisfied that the
water is no longer taking on any more color, completely dry the powder
in an oven set to 120-150 degrees F.

[Note: Water washes of the extract will not remove tannin until you
have removed as much of the Chlorophyll as you can using Naphtha
first, and have then evaporated all hint of the Naphtha out of the
extract otherwise the water will not cut through a barrier of waxy
Chlorophyll or Naphtha wetted extract enough to be able to dissolve
the tannin. If you have done a good job removing tannin from the
extraction solvent and then removed as much Chlorophyll as you can
using Naphtha followed up by water washes of the extract to remove
most of the remaining tannin, the amount of dried extract from a 250
gram extraction of average potency leaf should weigh close to one gram
and be well over 50% pure. Save all of the water used to remove tannin
and check it in a few hours to see if more salvinorin has settled out
of the fluid.

6.5 Making Tincture.

Skip this step if your not making tincture.

Dried extract which has had this amount of Chorophyll and tannin
removed by pure Naphtha (without any contaminate to leave any kind of
residual and evaporated completely out first) is perfect for making
tincture, just dissolve as much of the extract as you can into 151 to
191 or higher proof Ethanol drinking Alcohol of any kind while at room
temperature and you will have an effective tincture, the higher the
proof, the more effective. Removing more of the Chlorophyll than
Naphtha can remove by continuing to wash the solids with 99%
Isopropanol, at some point, will make the extract too pure for making
an effective tincture if using 151 proof drinking Alcohol. When making
a low Chlorophyll content tincture this should only be done when using
extremely high proof Ethanol such as 98%, but even then an amount of
the dark compounds from the leaf seem to help sublingual absorption of
salvinorin. (which will be removed if continuing to clean the extract
to a white purity as shown in step 7, below). When dissolving the
extract in Ethanol to make tincture, decide on the amount of tincture
which can be made out of the amount of salvinorin contained in the
amount of leaf extracted from and dissolve all of your extract into
that amount of Ethanol. If having extracted from 100 grams of dried
leaf you should be able to make at least 5 to 6 ounces of 151-191
proof Ethanol tincture from that amount of extract. If you have
extracted from enough leaf to make six ounces of tincture dissolve all
of the extract into six ounces of Ethanol all at once instead of
making each one separately, otherwise if using too much extract to
make a single ounce of Ethanol the excess salvinorin which won't fully
dissolve into the Alcohol will end up in the bottom of the tincture
bottle as a solid, making a dose of tincture far too potent if a large
portion of the solids are accidentally sucked up into a dosing
dropper. Although, there is one positive way to look at it if you find
Salvinorin solids in the bottom of your Alcohol, you can be assured
that the Alcohol contains as much salvinorin as can be dissolved into
it. This would be a good way to make sure the tincture is strong
enough by using only half as much Ethanol as you believe is needed to
completely dissolve all of the salvinorin extracted from your leaf,
and then continuing to add more of the drinking Alcohol a little at a
time until all of the extract completely dissolves into the fluid.

Note: If using 191 proof Ethanol this Alcohol probably won't hold much
more than 1.2 mg of salvinorin per ml of fluid when at room
temperature, 98% Ethanol should hold close to 1.3 mg per ml of fluid.
A moderate amount of Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf dissolved
into Ethanol have been reported to allow tincture to hold more
salvinorin per ml, approaching 1.5 mg or more per ml if using very
high proof Ethanol. I have found when making my own tincture using 151
proof Ethanol and dissolving near pure salvinorin into this relatively
low proof Alcohol that the tincture was not at all effective without
also having Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf present in the
tincture too. If you have removed every bit of Chlorophyll that can be
removed from your extract using pure Naphtha you don't need to be
concerned, there will still be enough in the extract to make tincture
out of any 151 proof drinking Alcohol of your choice. Whether tincture
made from 151 proof drinking Alcohol needs some of the Chlrophyll
compounds in it to make an effective tincture because without it,
salvinorin can't be efficiently dissolved into 151 proof Alcohol which
is nearly 25% water, or whether the Chlorophyll compounds actually
help increase sublingual absorption of salvinorin is unknown to me at
the time of this writing. Perhaps it does both.

7. To further purify your extract begin washing the solids with very
small amounts of 99% Isopropanol in a ratio of no more than 1/3 dried
extract to 2/3 Isopropanol in a small 20-30 milliliter vial or shot
glass until the extract is a light colored salvinorin. This is done by
pouring in IPA and mixing the extract into it for a couple of minutes
until the fluid becomes a dark color and then setting the small glass
aside to wait for the fine crystalline salvinorin particles to settle
to the bottom of the glass which can take an hour or more the first
time. During the first wash of the extract with 99% IPA the fluid will
likely become so darkly colored that once the majority of the
salvinorin particles have settled it can be difficult to tell where
the fluid and solids separate in the glass, because of this remove no
more than half of the volume of fluid off the top before adding more
Isopropanol. This can be done by either using an eye dropper to remove
half of the volume of fluid from the top (don't dip too deep), or by
carefully pouring half of the fluid out of the glass while closely
watching under a strong light to make sure none of the solids start to
flow out with the fluid, although when pouring the fluid off you
probably won't be able to get the last third or more of the fluid out
without also pouring some of the solids off to, so using an eye
dropper is my preferred method to reduce losses. To continue washing
your extract to a lighter color higher purity extract re-fill the
glass with fresh Isopropanol and stir it in again for a minute or two
and then set the glass aside for two hours to give enough time for all
of the salvinorin particles to settle to the bottom of the glass. As
the salvinorin becomes cleaner with each wash of the solids, the
micron sized crystalline particles of salvinorin will take longer and
longer to settle out of the fluid, taking as long as three hours or
more to completely settle after each wash when using a single ounce
sized glass, longer for larger capacity containers due to the
increased amount of fluid. Don't pour the fluid off of the cleaned
salvinorin in the bottom of the glass if the fluid has a cloudy look
(assuming you don't have lots of tannin contaminate in it) because
this means that you still have lots of fine salvinorin particles
floating or suspended in the fluid and you should wait for however
long it takes for them to settle before removing the fluid or you will
be loosing too high a percentage of your yield. You can continue
washing the extract until it is a light green color or all the way to
white if you like, however this will increase your losses, up to 25%
going as high as 50% if you don't wait long enough for all of the fine
particles to settle which sometimes takes hours. Cleaning the solids
to a white color isn't necessary because once it's a light green tint
the extract is a high enough purity to consider it over 90% salvinorin
for use to enhance leaf, just use 10-15% more extract when lightly
colored to make up for being less than completely pure. Be sure to
save all of your Isopropanol from the first wash plus as it can
contain a quarter or more of your salvinorin, depending upon how much
was used, how far you cleaned the extract and whether you waited for
all of the salvinorin A particles to settle before pouring off. If
having extracted from 100-250 grams of leaf, use no more than 25 ml of
99% Isopropanol per wash, if extracting from one ounce of leaf no more
than 8-10 ml per wash. Although salvinorin is weakly soluble to 99%
Isopropanol take great care to use as little as possible or you will
loose too much salvinorin with each wash to the point of removing most
of your yield if too much is used.

Note: Small amounts of Isopropanol can hold far more chlorophyll
impurities than salvinorin on a milliliter basis and due to this when
the extract is washed through several times with a few milliliters of
this solvent at a time more and more of the green is removed while the
bulk of the salvinorin will remain behind. However, in an inverse of
the technique of waiting for the tannin sediments to fall out of the
Isopropanol or Acetone used to extract leaf which on a ml basis will
hold far more salvinorin than the amount which was dissolved into it,
this time you will be waiting for the salvinorin to fall out of the
Isopropanol because the limited amount of solvent used it cannot hold
all of the salvinorin being washed. Half of the salvinorin particles
will be relatively large and will fall out of the fluid in just 20
minutes and smaller particulates will continue to fall out of the
fluid for three hours or more. To prevent large losses of your yield
to the Isopropanol washes of the extract you must wait for all of the
extra fine salvinorin particulates to fall out of the solvent, waiting
for the fluid to become completely clear. The Isopropanol can be dark
to lightly colored from white through shades of yellow all the way to
dark almost black looking green, but never cloudy before you remove
the fluid or you can loose a significant portion of your yield.
However, you don't have to wait as long for the salvinorin particles
to fall out of the fluid as you did for the tannin sediments because
salvinorin is a relatively heavy compared to the tannin particulates
and will fall out much faster.

If you have extracted from less than 10 grams of dried leaf I don't
recommend removing Chlorophyll compounds from the extract using
Isopropanol if having extracted from that small an amount of leaf, it
can be done if you use small enough vials only using a couple of
milliliters of 99% IPA per wash, but smaller amounts of leaf require a
higher amount of skill obtained through practice. Only use 99%
Isopropanol to purify extract, 70% will not work, 94% might not work
either. 98% Ethanol can be used but salvinorin is almost twice as
soluble to high proof Ethanol and will remove close to twice as much
Salvinorin per ml of fluid. When refining salvinorin with 99%
Isopropanol or high proof Ethanol all the way the extract will not be
pure white, it will be a off white. Salvinorin can be refined to a
bright white  powder using limited amounts of Acetone, but this cannot
be easily accomplished when working with small amouts of salvinorin.
However, Acetone can be reasonable to use if refining the extract from
from several kilos of leaf as a follow up process after first having
removed as much of the chlorophyll as can be accomplished using 99%
IPA. The reason to use 99% IPA first is because you will have far less
losses of salvinorin in a solvent which salvinorin is weakly soluble
to compared to the almighty king of solvents for salvinorin which is
Acetone. If you have several grams of IPA cleaned salvinorin which is
an off white color Acetone can be used to further purify the extract
to produce an absolutely brilliantly white salvinorin powder, but at a
fairly high cost of total yield due to the amount of salvinorin this
solvent can hold per ml of fluid so use this solvent extremely
sparingly. Of course, these losses are not real losses because you can
save all of your salvinorin containing solvents used to purify your
extract because they can be re-worked again to get most of the
salvinorin out of them using smaller quanties of solvent via the same
purification process.

8. Once your extract has been cleaned to the color desired and
completely dry and free of any other solvent, you can check to make
sure it does not contain any tannin impurity by dissolving all of your
extract into 100 ml of warm Acetone and waiting 12 or more hours to
see if tannin particles fall to the bottom of the glass. You don't
need to worry about trying to dissolve too much salvinorin in 100 ml
of Acetone from a 250 gram extraction of leaf because that amount of
Acetone should easily hold close to four times the amount of
Salvinorin in the dissolved state which would be contained from that
amount of average potency leaf, being able to hold approximately 2300
milligrams of salvinorin when at room temperature. If the fluid
appears at all cloudy after dissolving salvinorin into it this means
that either you didn't dissolve the salvinorin into the fluid
thoroughly enough, or there is lots of fine tannin present. Unless
tannin is present and stirred up into the Acetone it should be clear,
it can be colored from a light yellow to a dark green tint if you
didn't remove all of the Chlorophyll, but never cloudy before you pour
the fluid off or something is wrong. If after a few hours the Acetone
is still cloudy continue to wait, the tannin will fall out of the
fluid eventually, taking as long as 24 hours in one case when I did
it. When your ready to pour the Acetone out for evaporation to net
your tannin free salvinorin don't try to get the last few milliliters
of fluid out of the glass because some of the tannin will come along
with them, better to add more Acetone and shake it up to dissolve what
ever remaining Salvinorin there might be in the remaining fluid or
mixed into the tannin sediments than to try to pour out every last
drop of fluid. Of course, you will have to wait for the tannin to
settle out again.

Here is a standardization procedure so that you can add salvinorin
back to leaf. This came from a well known Salvia divinorum researcher
explaining how to make 6X enhanced leaf:

The method is simple: Dissolve a measured quantity of salvinorin A in
a solvent, and then absorb it onto a measured quantity of crumbled
salvia leaves. Evaporate off the solvent, and Wha-la! Here is a more
detailed explanation: To make salvinorin A enhanced leaf that contains
15 mg salvinorin A per gram of leaf, dissolve 12.5 mg* pure salvinorin
A in 1 ml of warm acetone, and then add 1 gram of crumbled salvia
leaves and stir. The leaves will absorb the salvinorin A-containing
acetone. Place the container in a well-ventilated location and wait
for the acetone to evaporate off. Stir the leaves occasionally during
the evaporation period. Make sure that the acetone has evaporated
completely--there should be absolutely no smell of acetone left on the
leaves.

* The amount of salvinorin A to use will vary depending on the
salvinorin A content of the leaves that it is being absorbed onto. If
the leaves are of average potency, containing 2.5 mg salvinorin A per
gram, then you would deposit 12.5 mg salvinorin A onto them to bring
the concentration to 15 mg per gram (as in the above example). Of
course, one can standardize the leaves to other concentrations as
well. The more precisely you know the salvinorin A content of the
leaves, the more accurately you can standardize them. I use very pure
salvinorin A for this procedure. If you are using material that is
impure, you will need to take into consideration the percentage of
impurities when calculating the amount of material to use. Obviously,
the same technique can be used to deposit salvinorin A onto other
types of leaf.

I strongly advise against smoking leaf that contains more than 15 mg
salvinorin A per gram unless the individual doses can be accurately
weighed. At this concentration, the amount of smoke produced provides
a certain amount of safety because it makes it difficult for a person
to accidentally inhale too large a dose in a single inhalation. If you
have a precision balance that can accurately weigh small doses, then
stronger concentrations are preferable since the amount of smoke can
be minimized without compromising safety.

Note: Acetone is the best solvent to use for enhancing leaf because so
little fluid is required to completely dissolve relatively large
amounts of Salvinorin, and evaporates fairly rapidly compared to
Alcohol.

Is there a way to make a less harsh smoking enhanced Salvia divinorum
leaf?

Yes, although this might actually make the leaf too easy to smoke. I
have found that Salvia divinorum leaf is much easier to smoke when
most of the Chlorophyll and tannin has been removed from it. Here is
how I make my own high quality standardized Salvia divinorum leaf:

The first thing I do is hand select each leaf for quality, setting
aside the stiff dark to almost black colored leaf in favor of the
lighter colored soft green leaves. Once I have my pile of leaf to be
made into incense I carefully hand de-vein the stem running through
the center of each leaf being careful to keep the leaf in as few
pieces as possible. When I have a full bowl of de-stemmed and
de-veined broken leaf I then extract the leaf with a room temperature
solvent such as Acetone or 99% Isopropanol several times to remove as
much of the Chlorophyll from the leaf as I can. Of course, I save the
extract to be processed later, but because of the extra work required
selecting the best leaf and de-veining them this process isn't meant
to obtain Salvinorin, but rather to condition the leaf to ready it for
salvinorin enhancement.

After your done extracting your leaf to remove as much Chlorophyll as
you can with solvent, evaporate all of the solvent out of it so that
it is completely dry without a hint of solvent smell in the leaf and
then boil all of the leaf together in a pot of hot water for a half
hour or more, once the water turns brown pour it off and add more
water to boil the leaf again. Keep doing this over and over until the
water will no longer take on a brown color. When done pour all of the
water off of the leaf and spread it out on a cookie sheet and dry in
an oven set to between 125 and 150 degrees F. for however long it
takes to completely dry, usually several hours in a convection oven.
After the leaf is completely dry you can use it to make your own
standardized enhanced leaf at what ever X factor you desire. When
Salvia divinorum leaf is conditioned this way by removing most of the
Chlorophyll and tannin first the leaf will then readily absorb
salvinorin dissolved into Acetone when making standardized leaf.

If you have finely crushed leaf instead of large pieces you can
process the leaf just the same, but I like to keep the leaf in as
large and few pieces as possible because when drying in an oven they
will shrink quite a bit. Also, I believe that large pieces of enhanced
leaf are better than smaller pieces because it provides far more
options for how it can be burned. The only thing is, when you have
such nice big pieces of enhanced leaf you won't want to package it in
small plastic bags which can easily allow the leaf to be crushed or
broken further. For this kind of special standardized leaf I like to
package the leaf in a small round tin so that it can't get smashed or
broken into smaller pieces. These little tins can be purchased in
large lots fairly cheaply from a company called SpecialtyBottle.com

Extraction notes, insights to the process:

Extraction solvents and fluid volume

The solubility of pure salvinorin to 27 degree C. Acetone is
approximately 23 mg per ml of fluid, for 98% Ethanol 1.28 mg per ml
and for 99% IPA .74 mg per ml of fluid. For Acetone extractions I like
to use enough solvent so that its volume is at least the same as the
volume of the powdered or crushed leaf being extracted and when using
98% Ethanol or 99% IPA at least two thirds or more times of solvent
volume to the amount of crushed or powdered leaf which is in reality
is more than required on a solubility basis, but due to these solvents
being less effective at dissolving the salvinorin out of the leaf than
Acetone I prefer to use more as an added measure just to make sure.
Also, increasing the amount of fluid allows the leaf to be easily and
thoroughly mixed within the solvent when stirring. The amount of time
the leaf is soaked in either solvent can be extended for as long as
you wish, this will only help increase the extraction efficiency,
however I have found that when extracting Salvia divinorum leaf five
times over for five minutes each time with 99% Isopropanol that it
won't get all of the salvinorin out, usually leaving 10 to 20% of the
salvinorin behind which requires an additional long term soaking of
the leaf to get the last of it out. When using Acetone to extract leaf
I have found that it will remove the salvinorin so efficiently that
when re-extracting the leaf a fourth time over to check and see if any
was left behind I have not been able to get enough additional
salvinorin to be able to tell. If using Isopropanol I do not recommend
using anything less than 99% for this quick extraction method as IPA
with large amounts of water in it will dramatically increase the
amount of time required to efficiently extract the salvinorin. 91% to
94% IPA found on some store shelves might work for short extractions,
but I haven't tried it to know.

Tannin Removal

This extraction process has three separate steps incorporated into it
to remove tannin impurities, the first step will get most of it, the
second step another portion and the last step every bit of it if you
are careful. Waiting 24 hours for the tannin to fall out is better
than 12 hours but be sure to keep the extraction solvent in the dark
the whole time while waiting because if it is left out in bright
sunshine you can loose some of your yield due to the interaction of
ultra-violet light which can destroy salvinorin while in solvent.
Almost everyone has the same problem with tannin the first few times
they try this extraction technique, ending up with far more of it in
their extract than they believed possible thinking that all of it must
have certainly settled out of the fluid when waiting as many as 24
hours for it to come out of the fluid, but it's still in there to some
extent, especially if having used a solvent with any amount of water
in it. To deal with this common problem I have worked an additional
step into the process to wash out tannin that remains in the extract
after cleaning with Naphtha (drying first) using water and then one
more tannin removal step at the end of the process by dissolving the
cleaned extract into Acetone and waiting 12-24 hours to see if more
drops out of the fluid because at that point regardless of your best
efforts you will likely still have some of it in the extract. Be
careful not to touch your face or other sensitive areas of skin when
working with Salvia divinorum wetted by solvent or when having
residues from the extract on your hands. Something in the leaf can
cause an allergic reaction which I believe is caused by the tannin in
the leaf which is a acidic astringent causing sensitive areas of skin
to become reddened along with an amount of swelling and later flaking
of skin which can last several days. I have never had a problem with
the skin on my hands or arms but my face always has this reaction if I
scratch my nose or rub my eyes when slight amounts of extraction
residues or are present on my fingers this happens every time.

Using Solvents to Remove Chlorophyll

The reason I use Naphtha to remove Chlorophyll from extract first,
before switching to Isopropanol, is because Salvinorin isn't soluble
to Naphtha but the Chlorophyll is. Unfortunately, after a few washes
of the extract with Naphtha it becomes ineffective for removing the
last of the Chlorophyll requiring the use of another solvent such as
99% Isopropanol to get the last of it. Although 99% Isopropanol does
an excellent job of removing the remaining Chlorophyll, this solvent
removes at least three quarters of a milligram of the salvinorin per
ml of fluid when at 20 degrees C., more when IPA is warmer, less when
cooler. Also, the solubility of salvinorin has been reported by an
experimenter to be much higher in 99% IPA when large amounts of
Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf are present which can result in a
significant portion of your yield being removed with each wash of your
extract if you use too much, so use it very sparingly. You can recover
a large portion of the salvinorin lost to the Isopropanol washes by
completely evaporating the solvent and removing the Chlorophyll waxes
using the same process over again with Naphtha and IPA in much smaller
amounts. Save all of your Naphtha used for the washes because although
salvinorin is insoluble to Naphtha there are usually extremely small
particles of salvinorin in the fluid which take much longer than an
hour fall out of the fluid and can be found in the bottom of the
container after a few hours netting another 10% of salvinorin. Save
all of the IPA used to wash your extract because it can be evaporated
onto leaf to make 5X enhanced leaf or after evaporation reconstituted
into drinking Alcohol to make tincture, depending on how much
salvinorin was removed through the washes. Be sure to scrape every bit
of film from the sides of your evaporation container because high
purity salvinorin films stick to the surfaces of evaporation
containers whether stainless steel, ceramic or glass. This is one way
to know you have salvinorin, because it sticks to these surfaces so
well. To see photographs of a room temperature 99% IPA extraction of
Salvia divinorum leaf and Chlorophyll being removed from extract using
Naphtha and 99% Isopropanol, go to:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/salvia..traction4.shtml

Reduced Chlorophyll Extractions Using Chilled Acetone

Although I don't believe it's necessary to go to the extent to use
chilled Acetone to reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted from
leaf when most of the dark compounds can be later removed from the
extract using washes of pure Naphtha, Acetone chilled to between zero
and +20 degrees F. is an effective method of initially obtaining a
cleaner extract which is somewhat easier to refine into white
salvinorin. A chilled Acetone extraction is done using exactly the
same steps as shown above for room temperature solvents, except to
reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted the amount of time the leaf
is in the cold Acetone should be limited to between three to four
minutes at the most for each of the three extractions, extracting the
same leaf three times over to maintain a fairly high extraction
efficiency. When working in a room temperature environment
pre-chilling both the leaf and the extraction container with the
Acetone together to a temperature no higher than 20 degrees F. will
help keep the temperature below 40 degrees F. throughout the
extraction. You want to start out cold and keep the solvent cold
throughout the extraction, but when working in a warm room the
temperature of the fluid can increase by 20 degrees F. to be as high
40 degrees F. while finishing up the last of the three extractions.
This amount of temperature increase is ok, but no warmer than that and
only during the last couple of minutes the leaf is in the solvent or
you will begin to pull over additional Chlorophyll in a hurry. When
working in a warm room and extracting with Acetone chilled to close
zero degrees F. this should keep the temperature of the leaf in the
solvent at or below +20 degrees F. the whole time which results in a
cleaner extract, so if you can chill it that far down it's a good way
to reduce the amount of Chlorophyll extracted even further without
impacting your extraction efficiency because of the high solubility of
salvinorin in Acetone, even when chilled to zero degrees F. cold
Acetone is still far more effective for dissolving salvinorin from the
leaf than high proof room temperature Ethanol Alcohol, so don't worry
about chilling the Acetone that far down, your extraction efficiency
will still remain very high when using zero degree F. Acetone. If you
are considering the idea of using chilled Isopropanol to extract leaf
it won't work, I tried 99% IPA and found that it required four times
the amount of time in solvent for one quarter the extraction
efficiency of Acetone! However, salvinorin has been reported to remain
solvent in pure Ethanol Alcohol (grain Alcohol) when chilled to low
temperatures and might be worth trying, but I have not done so to
confirm this myself. Regardless, chilled Ethanol will not be as
effective as chilled Acetone which has a much higher solubility to
salvinorin than room temperature Ethanol.

Extremely brief extractions of Salvia divinorum leaf of one minute or
less with Acetone chilled to between zero and +20 degrees F., with
exception of an amount of tannin extracted, will yield an almost wax
free extract of high purity salvinorin. When extracting Salvia leaf
for just one minute you won't get all of the salvinorin out but you
should get close to a third or more of it. The amount of reduced
solubility of salvinorin to chilled Acetone is completely made up for
when doing multiple extractions to the same leaf, even when the
Acetone is chilled to as far down as zero degrees F. At one time I had
reported that chilled Acetone extractions were far less efficient than
room temperature Acetone because when using 99% IPA to remove
Chlorophyll from the extract I did not wait long enough for the
salvinorin particles to all settle out of the fluid and wasn't due to
the Acetone being chilled, so if you see any of my old reports that
chilled Acetone extractions are less efficient than room temperature
you can disregard that report. If your worried that you are leaving
salvinorin A behind when using chilled Acetone extract the leaf a
fourth time over, but keep that portion of the solvent separate from
the rest as it will have more Chlorophyll in it than the previous
three extractions. I have done forth extractions to leaf previously
extracted three times over for three minutes using both chilled and
room temperature Acetone to be sure I didn't leave any salvinorin
behind, and after removing tannin and Chlorophyll contaminates found
so little salvinorin that I couldn't isolate it through washes with
Naphtha and IPA because when finished there was nothing left to be
seen in the bottom of the vial. I have also taken the leaf from room
temperature and chilled Acetone extractions (after it dried) and
powdered the leaf in a small high RPM coffee grinder to a flour-like
consistency and when re-extracting it with Acetone was unable to get
any amount of salvinorin that I could see out of it.

The photograph below shows a chilled Acetone extraction that started
at +5 degrees F. which warmed up to +15 degrees F. by the time it was
completed which is fairly typical when working in a warm room, even if
you have pre-chilled both your leaf and extraction containers together
with the Acetone at the same time. Shown in the photograph is the
first wash of the extract with Naphtha, two washes with water and then
four washes with 99% IPA to further remove impurities yielding white
salvinorin. The weight of salvinorin shown in the photograph of the
scale is NOT representative of the extraction efficiency because when
I did this extraction I did not wait long enough for the super fine
salvinorin particles to fall to the bottom of the glass and
unknowingly removed lots of salvinorin when using the IPA to remove
Chlorophyll waxes. I later recovered the salvinorin from the last two
washes by completely evaporating the IPA and cleaning it once more
using Naphtha and more IPA which netted another 200 mg of salvinorin
making a total of 525 mg of cleaned salvinorin from the 250 gram
extraction, which is very good for average potency leaf. This doesn't
include the salvinorin lost from the first two 99% IPA washes. When
removing Chlorophyll waxes with 99% IPA the cleaner the salvinorin
gets the longer it takes to settle to the bottom, taking an hour or
longer to all settle to the bottom of the glass. If you have removed
most of the dark green from your salvinorin and are left with a cloudy
yellow fluid this means that you still have lots of super fine
salvinorin particles floating in the IPA (as seen in the photograph
below, the IPA was still cloudy) and must wait until the fluid is
completely clear before pouring off the IPA. The fluid can be colored,
but not so cloudy that you can't see through it as solvents which are
fully saturated with salvinorin are never that cloudy and should be
clear unless salvinorin particles are still floating in it (unless
fine tannin particles are still present). Even if you have waited long
enough for all cloudiness to settle out of IPA used to remove
Chlorophyll impurities from your extract be sure to save this solvent
because something in the dark Chlorophyll compounds from the leaf
appears to increase the solubility of salvinorin to Isopropanol to be
able to hold well over 1 mg per ml of salvinorin per ml of fluid,
reported to some times be as high as 5 mg per ml by a chemist who had
the use of an HPLC to test the solubility of salvinorin in a few
different solvents. Whether the ability of IPA to hold that much
salvinorin per milliliter was due to an actual increase of a
solubility to IPA or whether it was caused by fine particles of
salvinorin that were still floating in the solvent is something to
consider.

The following image shows a chilled Acetone extraction which yielded a
total of 525 milligrams of cleaned salvinorin from 250 grams of finely
crushed leaf. The photograph showing 324 mg of cleaned salvinorin did
not include the salvinorin recovered from the IPA used to remove
chlorophyll. The extraction efficiency was close to 100% but the yield
of cleaned salvinorin was close to 85% after recovering the salvinorin
lost to only the last two of the four washes of the extract with 99%
Isopropanol. The losses of salvinorin to IPA washes was far greater
with the cleaning of the extract from this extraction than it should
have been because I did not wait long enough for all of the ultra-fine
salvinorin particles to settle out of the fluid prior to pouring the
IPA off of the amount of salvinorin which had settled to the bottom in
the first hour. I should have waited up to three hours for the fluid
to completely clear so that all of the ultra-fine particles had time
to settle to the bottom of the glass before removing the IPA. I have
left the pictures in showing what Isopropanol clouded with salvinorin
particles looks like to show you what not to do. In each of the
photographs of IPA with salvinorin in the bottom of the glass you can
see these particles making the fluid very cloudy, but once they settle
you can see through the colored fluid (except the first wash with IPA
which is too dark due to chlorophyll). I did not try to recover the
salvinorin from the first two 25 ml washes of IPA due to the amount of
chlorophyll, but could have done so making the total amount of cleaned
salvinorin approach 600 mg. Not bad, considering 250 grams of average
potency leaf contains about 2.5 mg per gram of leaf for a total of 625
mg of salvinorin.

http://www.digitalgoo.com/public/fo..-1093686172.jpg

Note: The manufactures web site for the small scale in the photograph
is http://www.gramprecision.com and they no longer appear to make that
model and have since replaced it with a model named the Diagem II CT
50 with a suggested list price of $229.00 USD. It's accuracy is plus
or minus two milligrams which is accurate enough for weighing
salvinorin to make several grams of enhanced leaf at a time,
especially if over measured by 2-4 mg.

Go to this link to see my collection of extraction photographs on
yahoo:     http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/salvinorin2003/

Here is a link to a vendor who sells Salvia Divinorum in bulk for
super low prices of only pennies a gram if you buy a large enough
quantity: http://www.aztecasplants.com - There are other good vendors
who sell Salvia divinorum leaf but I have bought from this man and he
always came through with good product for me. The others I have not
bought from and cannot vouch for, but they might be just as reliable.
The reason I buy from Carlos of aztecasplants is because the leaf he
ships is organically grown in the high mountains of Oaxaca is
harvested by the Mazatec peoples who benefit from the sale too. Carlos
does not speak english very well and has an amount of difficulty
communicating via email, but he is an honest man and will come
thorough for anyone who buys from him. He does not know that I have
recommended him in this article, but I hope his orders increase from
it as this helps many poor families live a better life.

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