Lye is dangerous, but it does not eat through your skin in seconds, be it the pure crystal or a solution. But always keep vinegar next to you when working with lye, and wear shitty clothing and goggles.
And for what it is worth, screw time consuming recrystallization unless you are doing it as a hobby. The key is making sure there is NO water in your DMT/solvent pull. No, not water droplets...I mean the water you can't see.
No matter how careful you are in pipetting your solvent from the water, or separating it in a funnel, tiny microscopic droplets of water are in the solvent unless you let it settle for some time. And if you use a funnel, even slowly, some water droplets can get kicked up into the solvent.
What I do is separate the bark water from the solvent with a sep. funnel, then let the solvent settle another day with the anhydrous Epsom on the bottom on the collection jar. Then I carefully take solvent from the top, and remove to another jar. No bumping the jar! And always leave the last bit of solvent with powdered magnesium sulfate soaked with water/base at the bottom of the jar. I save it for later retrieval of those few mg with fresh solvent. Taking these extra steps will go a LONG way to getting a pure product.
I have not yet tried xylene, but from what I read it is the way to go as you can simply crash out DMT fumarate from xylene, separate DMT fumes from solvent, and dry.
As per normal procedure, wash DMT fum. with acetone, or FASA, or both (should be gleaming white if you do it enough times) ....then mix the dry, clean DMT fum with washing soda, enough water to form a reaction, should just be a paste....then dry, and soak with acetone, remove acetone from solids, evap for very pure DMT freebase crystals....or so I read.
I have made DMT base from DMT fumarate and it is very easy. I just see no point in rxtl when you are just going to break it up anyway. Much easier way to get very pure product it seems.
PS....I have been smoking DMT for 10 years now and never saw it as more than amusement/novelty. I assumed (still do) that DMT's real magic is when used as an ayahuasca additive. On the other hand, I have tried IMing DMT fum four times now and each time was a near +4. It is like a different trip from smoking it. If you are looking for a flash, there is none, but gentle building up to the godhead. I cried at the beauty of music, where as with smoked DMT the music faded into the background.
I've gone as high as 100mg IM and it gets VERY intense. Not like smoking it, but still intense in its own way. But always short, 45 min later I am back.