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Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: ddrugboy719 on September 30, 2012, 01:43 am

Title: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: ddrugboy719 on September 30, 2012, 01:43 am
Hello all, will probably be recieving some 4-aco-dmt the coming week, and am quite eager to try it out. Now i have an electronic pocket scale with max capacity 200g scale, with divisions of 0.01g, and its pretty reliable. But it is sort of old, does fluctuate about +/-0.02 g sometimes while im weighing weed/Md/etc. But the doses ill be weighing of 4-aco is in the range of 10-15-20 milligrams, which would correspond only to 0.01-0.02g on the scale.. How do you guys do it? Isnt that too much a range for error?
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: gestaltassault2 on September 30, 2012, 01:53 am
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/dose/dose_info1.shtml

Quote
Liquid Measurement Tech
by Zam

with contributions & suggestions by others, HTML & editing by Erowid


Summary:
Many psychoactives have doses in the 5-100 mg range. Few people have access to scales capable of measuring quantities that small, and buying one can be very expensive. The Liquid Measurement Technique is a powerful way to measure small amounts of chemicals very accurately. It consists of using a scale to measure a larger amount of a substance very accurately and then mixing this substance with a known amount of liquid. The dissolved substance in liquid form can then be administered much more accurately using a dropper or syringe. By using a liquid measurement technique, it is possible to use a 30$ scale and still measure accurately to only a few milligrams.

Requirements:
A scale accurate enough to measure very accurately the amount of material you want to break up into smaller doses.
A storage bottle appropriate to the chemical & solvent.
Solvent appropriate to the chemical (water, ethanol, acetone, dichlor, etc)
Liquid Measurement device: Eye dropper and/or small graduated syringe
Substance to be measured
A sticky label for the bottle or paper & clear tape.
A calculator, pencil & paper


The simplest way to do this is to use a standard extract dropper bottle sold at any 'health food' store, water, and a small syringe (1-20cc).

Choosing a solvent:
Choosing a solvent can be tricky if you don't know what's appropriate to the substance. Distilled water is the preferred type of water. Chlorinated tap water is almost always a mistake. Some substances don't dissolve well in water and can precipitate out over time. Some chemicals will dissolve in warm water and water can be used for immediate measurement, but not for storage. Some solvents will also degrade over time when stored in water. If you're working with a new substance, probably don't dissolve all of it at once.

Each solvent & chemical combination's solubility will also affect how much material mass will dissolve in each milliliter of the solvent. You can't fit 1 gram of sucrose into 1 drop of water.

Calibrating The Dropper:
If you're using an eye-dropper, first the dropper needs to be calibrated. Although droplets of a particular solvent tend to be very similarly sized between drops, they vary from one dropper to another and vary some between drops, so its very important to calibrate the particular dropper you're using.

Water tends to drop from small droppers at about 15-25 drops per milliliter. The simplest way to calibrate a dropper is to use the dropper bottle that you will be using and fill it using a graduated syringe so you know exactly how much water (or other solvent) you put in. If a 20 ml dropper bottle was to be used, a syringe can be used to measure exactly 20 ml of water into the bottle and then the dropper is used to move all of the liquid from the bottle into another container and each drop is counted. Record the total number of drops and divide by the number of milliliters you started with. This gets you the number of drops per milliliter. This takes time and should be done several times to get an accurate count of how many drops the dropper you're using has per milliliter. The number of drops per milliliter will very likely vary by 10-20% depending on how you squeeze it and other seemingly random variations.

If a syringe is used to measure the liquid, the calibration should be done for you. 1cc syringes are very good for this, but aren't as convenient to carry or store as a self-contained dropper bottle.

For this walkthrough, lets assume a 20 ml dropper bottle that has between 15-18 drops per milliliter.

Measuring the Material:
The material has to be measured accurately, so you know how much you're working from. The benefit of liquid measurement is that it allows you to measure many times the increment you intend to administer so that it can be done with less costly equipment and much more accurately. If you wanted to measure out 5 mg of a substance, for instance, you could weigh out 100 mg very accurately with a good scale, dissolve in a liquid and then take 1/20 of the resulting solution.

Measure a chosen amount to be weighed and weigh it very carefully. Record the total mass of the starting material.

For this example, lets assume 100 mg of starting material is accurately weighed on a .002 mg readable balance on a rock solid table that has been levelled properly.

Determining the Amount of Liquid:
At this point, its important to figure out how accurate the measurement needs to be. If you're working with a material where you only need to be +/- 5 mg you will not need as much liquid per mg of material than if you need to be accurate to .010 mg. You will need to use enough liquid so that each increment of liquid that you can measure accurately doesn't contain enough of the target chemical to be a problem. If you had a substance that needed to be accurate to within +/- 1 mg and you're using a dropper that has 15-18 drops per milliliter it would be inappropriate to make a solution where 1 drop = 1 mg of material because you're not likely to get reliable results, your hand can slip as you squeeze the dropper etc.

A rule of thumb is to figure at least a factor of 10 between the minimum liquid measuring increment (in the case of a dropper, thats 1 drop) and the minimum required accuracy for the substance you're dissolving. Lets say you're working with a substance (such as DOB) where you wanted to be accurate within .1 mg and you're using a dropper bottle. The Order of Magnitude Rule of Thumb would suggest at least 10 drops per .1 mg or 100drops per milligram. With our example dropper, that would be about 6ml per milligram and so only 3+ mg would fit in the entire bottle. This level of control would allow you to actually administer with reasonable accuracy to .05 mg (about 5 drops) and is probably far more than is actually required. Perhaps you re-think this and decide that what you really want it to be absolutely sure you are within .5 mg with the DOB, so you change to 10 drops per .5 mg and thus 20 drops per milligram. This allows the example 20 ml dropper to hold about 17 mg of DOB, which is a good amount of DOB: not enough to necessarily make all your limbs fall off & kill you if you took the whole thing at once and enough to be able to have multiple doses in a single container.

For this example, lets say that we have a material for which +/- 1 mg is no big deal (something like 2CB), so perhaps our target accuracy is 2 mg. We Rule of 10 Thumbs this to get 10 drops per 2 mg, or 5drops per milligram. That would allow me to put ~68 mg of material in the 20 ml bottle ( ( 17 drops per ml / 5 drops per milligram ) * 20 ml in bottle ). I think I'd rather reduce the accuracy a little and get more in the bottle, so I decide to go with 2 drops per milligram which will reduce my target accuracy quite a bit, but its still fine. If I slip and accidentally get an extra couple milligrams of 2CB, I'll survive. At 2 drops per milligram, that means 7-8 milligrams per milliliter (15-18 drops per milliliter for the example dropper). That means that about 150 milligrams in my 20 ml dropper bottle. Thats a good amount and 2CB is nice and stable in distilled water.

Another consideration when you're choosing a concentration is to think in terms of Fail Safe. Fail Safe means that when a system fails, it should fail in a way that isn't catastrophic to other systems. For liquid measurement, that means to think in terms of the tools you'll be using. If you are using an eye dropper, the obvious thing is that you might squeeze the whole dropper at one time by accident. Don't ever setup your tool so that you could accidentally administer a dangerous dose. You don't really need to be able to carry 100 doses with you. Keep the rest in a larger reserve bottle that you refill the administration bottle with.

Record the concentration & the number of drops per milligram.

Test Solubility:
If this is your first time with this substance and solvent, verify the substance is soluble in the solvent you've chosen (in the example, water). Take a small amount of material and dissolve it in a small amount of the solvent. If it won't dissolve, you may need to change solvents.

Mix Solution:
After you have the substance measured and the liquid measured, the two are combined in the storage bottle and shaken or mixed until no solid remains. After the bottle sits for a while make sure there is no precipitate forming as this could substantially change the concentration and the dropper or syringe could get chunks, which could drastically change the dose administered.

Make A Label:
Print the substance, the number of drops per milliliter from this dropper, the number of milligrams of material per drop and number of milligrams per milliliter clearly on a label for the bottle. Write the type of solvent on the label. Mislabelling illegal substances may seem like a good idea, but its not. Its surprisingly easy to forget and its surprisingly easy for someone else to take the label for whatever it says. If you can't write the name of the substance itself, use a code and write "Not For Internal Use" on the label.

Evaporating to a solid:
Although many salts & compounds can be easily dissolved in water or alcohol and administered as a liquid, many solvents are completely inappropriate for ingestion. The liquid measurement technique can also be used to take the resulting measured liquid that contains the substance and drying it on a glass or ceramic plate until the substance remains as a powder. The powder can then be scraped up and encapsulated.

Evaporating onto blotter:
The liquid measurement and evaporation technique is the very common way that LSD blotter is made, by making a liquid of known concentration and then either dripping onto squares or soaking sheets of paper in the liquid and then drying. The chemical is deposited on the paper. Many users of liquid LSD use this process informally to make it more transportable: putting a drop on a piece of paper and letting it dry to carry instead of the vial.

Liquid measured chemicals can also be deposited on paper formally by doing a series of tests on the target blotter paper to see how much chemical the blotter can easily absorb before crystals or material is left on the surface. The liquid measured substance can then have very accurately set doses soaked onto blotter paper and the resulting material is more easily transported. Blotter-deposited materials, however, usually have much worse shelf lives due to huge surface areas exposed to air and are often handled very casually. pH neutral, acid free, non reactive blotter paper is generally preferred. Typing paper and brown paper don't absorb much and may have other properties and dyes that could react with chemicals in unexpected ways. Evaporating onto paper works best for very low dose substances (such as LSD or DOB) and should not be used for storage.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: anon911 on September 30, 2012, 01:55 am
Search American Weigh Gemini-20 Portable Milligram Scale, 20 by 0.001 G on Amazon and buy it. It's the best 'cheap' scale on the market. You need 0.001 not 0.01 for milligrams.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: modest mouse on September 30, 2012, 04:33 am
definitely just buy a scale. it will come in handy.

if you use liquid measurement make sure first you measure it a few times on your scale and use a bag or something and figure out the difference which may help minimize inaccuracy.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: rainbowmembrane on September 30, 2012, 05:25 am
Search American Weigh Gemini-20 Portable Milligram Scale, 20 by 0.001 G on Amazon and buy it. It's the best 'cheap' scale on the market. You need 0.001 not 0.01 for milligrams.

24 bucks?  How reliable are these things?
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: anon911 on September 30, 2012, 06:11 am
Very reliable. I've had mine for a year now. It's the standard scale if you're doing drugs in the milligram range. I would trust it within 1-3mg-/+. What I'm saying is I don't trust it for weighing 1mg of 25i-NBOMe, but I do trust it for weighing 5mg of 25i-NBOMe. It's a great scale. Just don't trust it if the dose is THAT sensitive.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: The Mustard Walrus on October 24, 2012, 01:13 pm
Search American Weigh Gemini-20 Portable Milligram Scale, 20 by 0.001 G on Amazon and buy it. It's the best 'cheap' scale on the market. You need 0.001 not 0.01 for milligrams.

I have had my eye on this one and it seems to be a logical buy. Question: Would ordering one of these from the US Amazon site delivered to Canada possibly raise any flags at customs? Obviously they aren't illegal, but I wonder if customs might infer that the scale may be being bought for drug purposes. Wouldn't want to have my address flagged before I even order anything on SR. I'm a total virgin newb so apologies if this is a dumb/paranoid question!
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: microRNA on October 25, 2012, 11:46 am
there are a few legitimate uses for scales, such as cooking or making your own vitamins

i dont think it would be too suspicious

honestly dont know for sure though
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: Ben on October 26, 2012, 01:44 am
Don't be paranoid about purchasing scales.

Plenty of people order them for perfectly legitimate uses like jewelry making, or any other process that does not involve anything illegal.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: _dzzzlzzzd_ on October 26, 2012, 02:39 am
Search American Weigh Gemini-20 Portable Milligram Scale, 20 by 0.001 G on Amazon and buy it. It's the best 'cheap' scale on the market. You need 0.001 not 0.01 for milligrams.

I have had my eye on this one and it seems to be a logical buy. Question: Would ordering one of these from the US Amazon site delivered to Canada possibly raise any flags at customs? Obviously they aren't illegal, but I wonder if customs might infer that the scale may be being bought for drug purposes. Wouldn't want to have my address flagged before I even order anything on SR. I'm a total virgin newb so apologies if this is a dumb/paranoid question!

I have this one.  Seems pretty accurate.... I've used it to weigh out stuff as low as 10mg.  My friend has the tier above it, it's the black $50 one... I'd recommend that one if you have the cash, it's a lot easier to weigh bigger weights out.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: The Mustard Walrus on October 26, 2012, 12:41 pm
Thanks all. I will probably go ahead and order it, you know, for those customized vitamins I plan on making.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: flwrchlds9 on October 27, 2012, 05:23 am
Those scales are fairly reliable, more so above 10mg, the 0-10mg range is the least accurate range on the scale.

To accurate measure a 1mg dose, a mg scale wouldn't be accurate enough. You need one decimal place to the left of the weight you are trying to get accurately.

Example = mg scale would NOT be safe/accurate enough to weigh 1mg Xanaz powder, for example. You would need a .1mg (tenth milligram scale).
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: rainbowmembrane on October 27, 2012, 09:04 pm
Thanks all. I will probably go ahead and order it, you know, for those customized vitamins I plan on making.

Hahaha hilarious.  +1

Hunters that load their own bullets also use milligram scales.
Title: Re: Weighing out MG doses
Post by: quinone on October 27, 2012, 09:29 pm
Search American Weigh Gemini-20 Portable Milligram Scale, 20 by 0.001 G on Amazon and buy it. It's the best 'cheap' scale on the market. You need 0.001 not 0.01 for milligrams.

THANK YOU anon +1.  In my inept ability to use the search function it appears, I have been searching for the name of that company and it's balance for like a week haha.  On a side note, a TRUE analytical balance will set you back at least $500+.  So unless you're wealthy even though I don't personally endorse it, go with one of the many cheap jeweler's scales (read: not meant to quantify reagents ... eg. powders ... but will get you close enough I guess). 

The gemini one is the one whose name i've been trying to hunt down for a few days now, cuz ... i'm not wealthy lol and knew it was the best jeweler's scale just forgot it's name, thanks anon.  OP, go with what anon recommended, in the past it's the best jeweler's scale i've read about on the forums.