While I do agree that you don't sound ready regarding your understanding of the fundamental stuff to just go ahead and just try it, wasting materials and time... I guess it's not unfair to ask for human help.
But you can't just ask a few questions and try again - it requires going over your entire method, to avoid confusion about the thing you don't even realize you are not understanding.
Yes, it is a bit like a recipe, but it is too simple to just think that anyone can just go ahead without having a clue what exactly they are doing and why. Every time you do it is a little different so you have to follow the process yourself and you can't do that without understanding at least the basics.
I don't see the point in trying to answer your questions because they are too confused, but alright I'll try. Please post ALL of the information about the method you are trying to use, clearly and step by step. ALSO add what you yourself did and where things seemed to become problematic.
Then we can go over it. Please don't try to do this again in the meanwhile, you're not ready. Handling chemicals is another thing IMO, yes it is extra dangerous to handle them if you don't know chemistry, but they are dangerous anyway and you mostly have to know how to treat some of these ingredients or how to absolutely avoid treating them. Proceeding if you're not ready will just make you fail, this isn't just practising a lot, you have to understand what's going on instead of just going in hoping for the best.
A few things about the science szuko mentioned:
pH... similarly like temperature ranges from cold to something lukewarm in the middle to hot, the pH ranges from acidic to neutral to basic. Acidic means low pH below 7, neutral is pH 7 and basic is high pH above 7.
You need to understand about DMT that it is affected by the pH of the solution, the environment it is in. At low acidic pH, it wants to be in polar solvents like water. But going to higher pH, the DMT wants to be in non-polar solvents like naphtha.
The whole point about the extraction is to pull the DMT out of the rootbark into solution, and depending on the method, try to get rid of everything else you don't want that gets left behind because it does not behave like DMT.
1. Sodium carbonate is a base so it raises pH. It will make the DMT want to be in naphtha. You need a pH meter like at the least test strips you can buy for an aquarium, to monitor your pH. Although using that with non-polars can be problematic, an example of the MANY things you can run into if you are clueless. It does not take time for sodium carbonate or bicarbonate to be basic or make a solution basic, but it takes a little time for it to mix and dissolve so that it gets everywhere. If it has to be overnight, it is because you have to leech (extract) the DMT from the plant material which takes time. Also because it makes the DMT insoluble in the basic water it is inefficient. Stirring as often as possible tends to be a good thing.
2. Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, an acid so the opposite of the base sodium carbonate is. Entirely different thing. These are both weak as acid and base, unlike say lye which is a very strong base or muriatic acid which is a strong acid. Those are dangerous to work with as you cannot afford to be messy, but they are far more reliable to achieve high or low pH.
3. Starting out? I assume you mean with a STB method, where you start out with a high pH like szuko said. With an A/B extraction you start out with low pH by adding an acid, going to high pH is done later there and requires an extra step. At the neutral pH of water, DMT doesn't do much of anything in particular and its behavior and solubility is partial / divided. Useless.
4. No, at that point you have made freebase DMT sitting insoluble in water, it wants to be in a solvent like naphtha. So napthta is added to the whole thing and shaken (swirled may be better).
5. Naphtha does not dissolve, it should float on top of the barky water. If it does not separate properly, it possibly requires tablesalt or warming up to separate and float on it separately like oil floats on water. DO NOT use anything with open flame to heat something like that, ever, because the napthta is flamable.
6. Putting it in the freezer is for another purpose, not for separating the naphtha from the barky water. It's the opposite of what you want at that point. The freezer is for when you have successfully separated the napthta from the bark water, although it only works if the quantity is so small compared to how much DMT is in it that it causes DMT to crystallize, otherwise nothing will happen.
I don't know if I would use the hot plate during the first soaking step. It may very well help to separate the naphtha from the water at the later step, depending on what exactly you are using as a container to do this extraction in and how you plan on separating.
Decantation only really works if you use a high slim vessel to have a minimal contact surface when you try to pour off the naphtha. With a wide container, you are likely to have problems trying to pour off a very thin spread out layer of naphtha.
It is essential to choose the proper materials, and also it may work better to do the step where you add, mix and take away naphtha a few times with small quantities rather than one time with a big quantity. However that requires a good container for your decanting.
Some people apparently use turkey basters to try and scoop off the naphtha but it must be material that does not dissolve in the naphtha. And again it's a nightmare if you have to collect a thin layer in a wide broad container.
