Friday May 6 - Day 5: Started to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin. Failed badly and
ended up with converting the acetylsalicylic acid to worthless salicylic acid goo (at this point in time
I didn't know it was salicylic acid but It seemed very difficult to dry the substance). The guide I was
using was significantly lacking. I realized I didn't have any other contingency plan and I began to
somewhat panic. As I was unable to find any solution online the next two hours I began to lose
heart. As I had discarded my digital library of explosives guides I tried to locate guides, searching
online with anonymizer software, for a completely different booster compound. As I realized that
this task could take a week or maybe two my motivation and morale at plummeted. If I couldn't
even synthesize the first phase of the easiest booster how on earth would I manage to synthesize
DDNP?! My world crashed that day and I tried to develop an alternative plan. I went a restaurant in
the northern town that evening and enjoyed a three course meal. I later watched a few episodes of
"the Shield".
Saturday May 7 - Day 6: The only rational approach to this problem is to search online until I find
a proper guide to synthesize aspirin powder into pure acetylsalicylic acid. After several hours of
research my findings were extremely discouraging. All the guides I had found; mainly university
level chemistry projects, required a suction filter pump and a chemistry air dryer. The even more
discouraging news was that even with this equipment none of the university students managed to
get a better yield than 30%! Omfg, this would mean that even with the equipment I would never
acquire, my total yield would not surpass 30% which would severely cripple the overall plan... I
went to another restaurant that evening (I find it an effective method for getting my morale up) to
create a new plan. In any case; I appear to be fundamentally fucked If I cannot manage to find a
solution soon.
Sunday May 8 - Day 7:
Failure is not an option for me. I continued my search on methods for the purification of salicylic acid online.
After many hours of searching the net, using various search phrases, I managed to locate a single YouTube clip, with very few hits, which explained in detail an unconventional method for synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin. However, the guy was using a suction filter pump
and a laboratory air dryer but I figured I could bypass this requirement by using more funnel filters and by using an air drying method.
According to the guy on the movie, he managed to achieve a 70-80% yield! This method seemed to be viable and I would try to create a batch the next day.
