aussie101 is corredct, aqueous ammonia, or ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH), is not the same thing as pure, gaseous ammonia. (NH3). Gaseous, or anhydrous ammonia is used in Birch dissolving-metal reductions, with sodium or lithium, and also for agricultural usage.
One can manufacture your very own aqueous ammonia by heating a mixture of an ammonium salt (e.g. ammonium chloride or carbonate) and an alkali, like calcium oxide (quicklime) or sodium/potassium hydroxide, and carefully dissolving the gas that is liberated into cold distilled water. Be careful - ammonia gas is toxic and an irritant, in larger quantitites. Do it outside, or in a fume hood.
1. First, it seemed I had a good deal more in my filter JUST prior to the final water wash. Is this typical? And if so,
First off, the freebase is probably still wet with water (& water is very dense), and since you've quickly precipitated it out it will be a fine, fluffy, high surface area microcrystal. It may "seem" you have more, but it is pretty much physically impossible to get more than 100% recovery by weight on cocaine. (less than about 80% if you use HCl salt)
2. could I in the future just be patient and let the shit dry for like a week or even two?
Probably not a good idea - wet cocaine likes to decompose into non-psychoactive compounds like benzoylecognine and benzoic acid. It would be best to gently dry it with a heat lamp or something - but be careful not to melt it. Cocaine freebase melts at 98 degrees C - just below boiling water. Drying it over silica gel or in a vaccuum dessicator would work too if you have access to those.
Would I have to worry about ammonia in my final product?
Le Junk said:
pour a little more fresh water over the now pure cocaine freebase to wash away any final traces of ammonia.
Ammonia boils at -33C, ammonium hydroxide boils at 25 C. It is very unlikely.
4. l also I realize I literally just made the shit and it needs to dry, but it is not rock like AT ALL. It's very soft and flaky. Is this usual? Seems weird for base..
See answer to #1. Similar to how MDMA "moon rocks" are made, "crack rocks" are generally fused clumps of amorphous cocaine made from the cocaine freebase clumping tohether and fusing under heat (usualy being cooked on a stove top). It's like a snowball. What you have is more like snow - very tiny fine crystals of freebase. If you had a microscope, you could take a look at them.
Real "authentic" crystals, the transparent kind with regular structures, are usually grown by starting with a solution of a pure compound in a solvent it's only poorly soluble in, getting it really concentrated & hot, and waiting a long time for it to cool very slowly.