Weighing pure psychedelic compounds

I must admit, I have "eye-balled" doses of 2C-i. I am not proud of it and know it was extremely stupid.. Even if you don't care about your health, at least think about your money I had problems often with dosing too small, then neededing to re-dose, which I thought was only a couple of mg's.. turned out to be quite a booster and made the trip pretty uncomfortable physically. Lots of over stimulation, and edginess. I am not dosing another compound like this until I get some real scales.

But the question is.. which? You can go onto ebay sometimes you see Buy it Now Auctions of scales that go down to 0.01g (10mg resolution) for around $75 and stuff. Or you might be real lucky and pick up a real bargain of a good digital scale that goes down to 1mg... But that would be luck. Like walking into an op shop and finding a super cheap bulb machine without 60 kilos of rotten gunk inside it and a clean valve....

So where are aussies buying scales? This is not to do with dealing or anything, it is harm minimisation. I wanna dose myself with experimental chemicals, but only at the KNOWN "safe" dosages.

I have checked out balacnes.com and www.kern-sohn.com etc.. but as they are overseas, postage comes into cost, then time, then hassle.. and some companies probably wouldnt even ship overseas. Any decent, reliable scales companies in Australia, preferbly online that people have ordered from in the past?

No one seemed to give a shit on the BL chat channels

^ I'd also be interested in this. I'm not quite sure if it violates forum guidelines; in the spirit of HM i'd say it doesn't, but then again...

Our business just purchased a Mettler 0.001 res balance, but not for anything illicit (heaven forbid that anything illegal ever gets close to it 8() . We got a particularly good price, but I think they can generally be bought for around, or just over the 2 grand mark depending upon the resolution required. Ours is the middle one in the College series.

Off Ya Tree in Melb sells them for about the $700 mark. Not cheap I know, but compared to your health I think it's a good investment.

If you can't weigh compounds to at least 1mg then you really shouldn't be having them, its for your own benifit! Don't buy scientific equipment from drug paraphernalia shops, you will just end up being overcharged. If you want a scientific balance go through scientific avenues, it will be cheaper and better. If you can't afford a new one look into buying a second hand one and get it professionally serviced and calibrated if you cannot afford a new one.

Out of interest, how often do they need calibrating? And how much does servicing (including calibration) on such a delicate piece of equipment cost?

^^ If you invest in a proper balance then you should also get calibration weights. They can be expensive for high precision, but are useful to have because after time the balances will drift. I am not sure how long it would take for this to happen, but I suspect that older balances will do this more quickly than newer ones.

Metler toledo is the shit! :D

Not that i'd know 8)

You could always dilute it in a solution of alcohol, either drink a small dose (say 1ml depending on how many mgs it can take before its saturated) or evaporate measured doses... The only way to do it without at least .000 scales.

A friend of mine works in a business which is a service agent for Mettler. The service work is reportedly a piece of cake - providing you have the calibration weight(s). The balance mentioned above has 2 options; internal calibration or external via a weight of exceptional accuracy. The 200g weight used is so accurate that it comes sealed in its own little box with it's own gloves for handling. Even the environment it is opened in needs to be considered and be clean of airborne dust and vapours.

A friend who is a jeweller has a Tanita 0.001 balance. These are reportedly available for under a grand although I have to say there is a noticeable lack of accuracy and precision when compared to the Mettler B303s. Turn on the Mettler, wait for just a sec for it to zero. Open the lid and blow, close the lid, and watch as the air inside settles and the reading returns and sits unwavering on 0.000. I have a 20g weight designed for an older pan type balance scale. It weighs exactly 19.927g on the B303s. That is anywhere the apparatus is set up!! - providing of course the balance is re-leveled each time it's moved.

As always with something from me, there's an element of the unusual in the story. The first night we received delivery, I thought I'd set it up and run it overnight, observing any changes to where the readout sat. It remained steady and I went to bed. Next morning, being rather anxious to show it off to a visitor, I looked down to see ants crawling in and out of the mechanism. An initial panic gave way when it was realised they had only just found it! After a patient wait for all to emerge, it was packaged away, and much thought given to a clean room

BTW, if you do manage to obtain a Mettler balance, my friend says the only thing that does them great damage - read; expensive to repair - is if a cockroach or other insect gets sandwiched between the weighing platform and the sensor.

Checkout ebay, search for 0.002g resolution.. Carat Scales... Search title + description

10mg resolution is WAY too in-accurate for the required 10-24mg dosage.. Also remember to factor in your measurement error factor here.. For a scale of 0.01g accuracy, id say +- 0.005g error factor... As you could have 14mg or 16mg and skip to the next reading? So will you ever know if you have enough? too much? no!..

Using above said scales, from 1000mg came exactly 10x100mg weights.. All showed exactly 100mg on the scales. The resulting un-distributed mass came to 16mg... So over 1000mg, measuring this down to 10 even doses.. the average error factor here was 1.6mg whilst the scales read in 2mg increments...

Give it some thought... I figure if i aim for 20mg, i'll get roughly 19<->21mg... This is acceptable in terms of dosage..... Do keep re-measuring items, let the scales stabilize and continually check calibration weight measurement...

Had a little accident the other week aswell, accidentally calibrated my mates scales in-correctly... It turned out that i over did all dosages to ~24mg from the measured 20mg... Whoops Do make sure you read the bloody manuals!

Checkout ebay, search for 0.002g resolution

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I'm not sure I'd recommend any cheap balance with three digit resolution. For anything much below 0.1, the strain gauge or similar sensor which is used to translate minute weight to resistance changes must be of an exceptional quality, and should be completely immune to environmental changes. You may have noted that I described the lack of precision with a Tanita brand scale compared to the Mettler-Toledo 303. Although rated at .001 res, the Tanita was not even accurate to the 2nd digit, and moving and recalibrating failed to achieve adequate precision (reweighing and getting the same figure)

If you are weighing chemicals which are psycho-active in the range of 10's of milligrams, and where 1-2mg over can be dangerous, then invest in a good balance. You'll never regret it, as it is your wellbeing and that of your friends' which is at stake here.

Let's face it. Involvement with high potency chems is expensive. Not so much for the drug itself, as for the dispensing and handling. Just imagine the potential disasters if another LSD like potency chem surfaced and became available in a concentrated solid form. If you play with high power substances - then get the high power tools. That's my opinion anyway.

Harm Reduction needs to commence with the initial decision to take a drug, the next thought being; how much should I take?. I can't speak for others but I hate getting too much sugar in my coffee

Perhaps ol' Norm-Fatboy wasn't talking about a Roland beatbox, or the caliber of a rifle, but was in fact predicting the advent / popularity of high potency RS chems, and the fact that everyone doing them will need a Mettler 303

Cheap balances such as those crappy non-scientific 200 dollar ebay ones are not going to be anywhere near as accurate as proper scientific balances with draft shields. You get what you pay for, and I'm sure those calibration weights that came packaged with it wouldn't be of a high accuracy either.

Cowboy Mac said:

If you can't weigh compounds to at least 1mg then you really shouldn't be having them, its for your own benifit!

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Well the scales we use are from Off ya tree and true they might not be the most accurate scale in town. But when your measureing out 10mg of 2CI, even if it's off by 5mg(50%error), that still not a large dose.

What about copping 30+ml dose instead of 20? *shudders*

Well whats best? or using some 'cheap' scales ? I'll accept the 2mg deviation thanks...

Kinda on topic - remember that not every drug has a 'linear dose response'. This means that a 15mg dose is not necessarily 1.5x as strong as a 10mg dose (potentially much stronger).

BigTrancer

^^ Actually very on topic BT.

Please read the thread again if you think a 1-2mg deviation is worth gambling on, especially with many 2C compounds. If you think that giving a newbee (to that drug) a dose of 2C-T-X, 2C-I or even 2C-B, with that sort of dosage error is safe, then think again.

People fuck up dosages with GHB powder, and that has a relatively high margin of error at grams/dose when compared to the active levels of around 5-30mg and the corresponding room for error with many psychoactive tryptamines or PEAs.

If you are to use milligram critical drugs, then get a balance that's at least accurate to the 1.0mg level. That really means buying a 0.0001g res balance, but things really get expensive at that level.

There was a thread about this a while ago, but you can really lower your margin of error if your scales only go to 10mg increments if you mix the active powder with something neutral like icing sugar or something. Putting 100mg of active powder (with a 10mg scale, this should be between 95 - 105mg) with 900mg of sugar, and mixing it well, your dosage of 100mg should now contain 9.5 to 10.5mg of the active substance.

If you are using 10mg scales, this method should provide a far safer method of measuring your dosage.

bRAVEheart

^ It can be tough to make sure a powder is evenly mixed, which might add a fair amount of uncertainty to your dosing process. Maybe better to dissolve the drug in a suitable solvent and then measure liquid doses based on a known concentration? That way you'll be certain that the drug is dispersed evenly throughout the diluted mix.

BigTrancer

It's only $200 us (plus postage,which isn't alot) for a Tanita 1210-50,these are accurate to within 2mg,anda lot of folks in the psyche forums swear by them.
That really isnt a lot of money,cosidering they sell for $600-$700 in Aus.
[EDIT**] is probablycheapest too.



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