Isosafrole via grignard?

DubleHelx · Sat Jun 11, 2005 2:55 pm

I was thinking the other day that it would be possible to synthesize isosafrole via piperonal and ethyl grignard and then dehydration of the resulting alcohol. This might seem somewhat laborious for those of you that have access to nitroethane and piperonal, but I do not have access to nitroethane and it is not as easy to make in good yields as reported in the compendium from the back up of rhodium's site (tried both the ethyl halide (Iodoethane) and the route via Sodium Ethyl Sulfate). It seems one could follow the traditional routes to MDA, MDMA, MDE etc. from isosafrole after this point. What does everyone think of this?