Collecting tartar oil; Fire Stone work

My work on the 7 planetary elixirs is done, they're in incubation right now and will be for three months. Right now I'm working on collecting enough oil of tartar for my work on the Acetate Path using galena. In the meantime I'm continuing my work on the Fire Stone; I've finished extracting the acetate from the Kermes I made and am evaporating that down until I get crystals. I'll post a picture of what I get when that's done.

A curious anomaly regarding calcining

I used horsetail for one of my planetary elixirs, and working with this proved to be most interesting. As you can see from the first image, it is still very dark. This is after days of calcining at around 300C, and despite this the ashes remain quite dark. The literature says we must calcine until the ashes are a very light gray to white, but this proved extremely difficult with horsetail. Other plants are quite easy to calcine to white. So, I decided to try leaching anyhow. What happened was quite remarkable: After mixing with distilled water, the ashes settled within a half hour (normally it takes a few hours for this to happen with most other herbs). After continuing with the rest of the ashes, the Salt it yielded was whiter than snow - the last picture doesn't do it justice, as it is a lot whiter than this. So, from my experience, if you cannot get your ashes to light gray or white, try leaching anyhow, as it may very well turn out well anyhow.

New thimble

Went to the local glassblowing store (after I finally found it), bought a length of pyrex glass tubing, had it cut to length, and now my work on the Fire Stone is back in action. Might take a while though, lots to get through.

Busted Glass Tube

About a month ago I had ordered a 28mm glass tube from eBay so that I could make myself a thimble for the soxhlet (the plastic one I was using dissolved in the acetic acid I was using). However, this particular seller was two weeks late in mailing it, and when it did finally arrive, the packaging was so horrible (was merely a cardboard tube, no padding) that the tube had shattered into a million pieces long ago. I was going to use this for my work on the Fire Stone, however it looks like that's even further delayed because of this.
There is a bright side: I recently found a glassblowing shop right in my neighbourhood (it wasn't there earlier, just seemed to pop out of nowhere). So tomorrow, having the day off, I will pay them a visit and see if they have what I need.

Random Joke

You know you're an alchemist when you have backups of everything cuz you know the first one's going to eventually blow up somehow.

Almost done 7 Basic Plant Elixirs

I just have one more extraction to go, and that's the basil tincture (doing all this by soxhlet extraction). The salts of each are almost done, just need to finish off the rosemary, then will do the horsetail (for the extraction I just finished), then lastly the basil salts. Once those are done I'm moving on to calcining/roasting some stibnite and galena for some projects.

Rosemary Salt Crystals

Last night I set my hotplate down to around 70C and left it overnight so that the rosemary salts would condense, and this morning I found these beautiful crystals had grown.

Cerussite!

I just bought a 528g chunk of cerussite for about 80 bucks off eBay; I'm very happy about that. Usually this stuff is horribly expensive. If you're wondering, cerussite is naturally occurring lead carbonate, which can be easily used in the Acetate Path. It's actually much easier to use than galena, as it doesn't require all the roasting.

Bugging neighbours... again

I may have gotten carried away a little with all the burning (calcining) I've been doing lately, even though it's all been done in the dead of the night. One of my neighbours had their window open last night and now their bedroom stinks :S Oopse. I guess I'll have to not only do my calcining at night but when there's also a wind or storm. Either that or just do very small quantities at a time. Ugh. It's so much easier in the winter to calcine - everyone's windows are closed no matter what during the night.
I had an idea about calcining/roasting the galena: Perhaps I could use the heat of a candleflame to roast it? I'll try a bit and see what happens. I'll have to be careful or I'll fuse the sulfur to the lead if it's too hot too soon, so I might have it a bit higher up where it's only warm, then have it closer when all or most of the sulfur is out. I'd have to do very small quantities at a time, like perhaps only a few grams, otherwise I don't think it would work (too much for the flame to handle). All this, of course, in addition to how I would normally do it (outside with the stronger hotplate).