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    easiest way to know whats what is once youve obtained your oil fraction is pour it in water, safrole sinks anethole floats


How reliable is that? The densities are pretty close to 1 (anethole is 0.998, safrole is 1.094, from wiki).

I guess if the water is pure and at <20c it should logically work      pretty neat idea/method if you needed to seperate the two 

hey b6baddawg have you done this, how 'clean' is the separation?   did you fractionate the separated oils or assay them in any way ?   

sorrry for all the questions dawgmon but it's a neat idea that I imagine could be used for other 'combos' as well,  so the more quality data we can compile here the better 

anethole does float after steam distillation though. seen it.

well thats a start

seriously though I do like the idea in general as it could well prove  its worth in time

As for small bushes containing saffy in the US...idk but I do know that its probably more than you think..google the question and variations thereof "safrole containing plants/in the US" and poke around I think you'd be surprised

Surely you know of the sassafras trees around    and in many places down south I believe you have similar camphora cinnamomun infestations like we have here! (Yeah you heard me right "Infestation" )

Introduced to the contiguous United States around 1875, Cinnamomum camphora has become naturalized in portions of the states of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and South Carolina.[2] It has been declared a category I invasive species in Florida

 The problem/question really is firstly "do they contain viable amounts and percentages of oils for extraction? Secondly "what percentage of the oil is the desired compound?"  these babies do

Go and get yourself a few (hundred ) kilos of rootbark and juicy shoots and come back and steam distill them, more than likely the oil (around 5% w/w) of which maybe 10% is safrole sometimes more sometimes less, it depends on lots of things (position of plant, time of year, part of plant taken etc)  fresh has yet to work out any better methods of working out what parts of the plant to take to  extract, and so he just relies on the smell of the plant matter and when chopping the bark.  It's usually pretty strong on growing plants.

Fresh uses a 'mini' mattock same shape as a big one but about the size of a tomahawk  with a handle 40cm long and a 'head' that's about 25cm end to end. 

 sharpen the flat end on the 'inner' (standing on it's handle like a 'T'  that is the bottom/lower edge) quite sharp and you have something that works like an adze and can carve off bark deep chunks with ease they're fuckin great and make gathering the bark easy

They're BIG trees with big roots and they often grow in clumps   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camphor_Laurel

and of course  http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/safrolefaq.html   

definitely worth checkin out if you haven't

 Fractionating the oil obtained from steam distillation to obtain a pure product is virtually a given. 
Maybe with some of the higher safrole content oils, freezing the safrole to separate it from the oil can be done as safrole has a very low mp

How about distillation with water?

What he is talking about is not steam distillation its known as hydrodistillation and is a single pot but it will destroy many unstable volatiles due to excessive prolonged heating, however it works very well for Safrole distillation.

It is different.  You just can't see it.

Ok fair enough ...  thanx for that 

agreed about the nomenclature. traversing this site has been an "experience" to say the least when it comes to the names.

my old futbol coach told me about KISS, highly underrated acronym.

i will return when i have more related information to this thread.
hermes