Okay, after some serious fucking with washing these pills I can say that a water wash alone will not circumvent the contin matrix, no way no how. I've tried several methods and the one that works the best, for MS contin anyway, is as follows.

Wash the pigment off or suck off, lol. Gently bake the pills in a flask, this makes crushing them sooooo fucking easy. Mix the dry cooled powder with some 1 M Hcl and allow it to sit a few minutes until its almost all dissolved. Dilute up to around 70ml (using 250mg of powder) with distilled water. Throw that in a 250ml erlenmeyer with 85ml of mineral spirits and 15ml of toluene (I'm sure this could be any number of things). Heat to 80C with stirring. Dump hot in to sep funnel and drain the aqueous layer in to a dish with a fan blowing on it.  Evaporate and scrape it up.

It's still dirty at this point, but not very, plus it's no longer sulfate, it's HCl. This was based on a post made by a guy named MobiusDick, who enjoys some amount of internet fame for his expertise in circumventing these time release mechanisms. I read MSDS's for two fucking days and I'm telling you that water alone will get you jelly everytime. I was able to breakdown the jelly with a lot of heat but all in all it took way more effort for a much smaller return doing it that way.

Now all you need to do is get your procedure ironed out, Hypnos.

I have since found that the endo variety of the ms contins work even better with this procedure. You have to add an additional purification step after drying your water the first time, though. The powder will still be orange and some of the binder makes it's way through, but none of the contin does. The shit clumps up in to nice globs of shit in the solvent layer. So the endos are definitely easier to work with if you happen to have a choice, which I do. I haven't ironed out a really awesome second wash procedure yet, but it wont be hard I just havent spent any time trying anything. Mainly I just wanted to see how the two differed doing them this way. I wont post any more about it since I would be pretty much hated by every person here if pill washers started showing up and asking how to wash their pills.

Well, that was going to be his method of obtaining the key precursor, I thought. And since it was mentioned earlier and the information in error I just thought I'd post my experiences. I'd be glad to delete my posts if OP or the mods want. I'm not real keen on teaching idiots how to wash pills anyway, I just thought Hypnos may need to know for what his buddies are doing. Also, I have suddenly found myself with an interest in the OP's original idea here, so, again, I felt the need to post my experiences so far. Unless he has raw morphine laying around, I dunno.

Don't taze me bro.