SWID is amazed. You just revealed more about what he has been doing wrong in one paragraph than he has been able to figure in the month or two since his last attempt.
In previous attempts, he was bright enough not to use chloroform as his non-polar solvent. Unfortunatly, as near as he can remember, he HAS been using CaCl2 as his drying agent. SWID had no idea that it might form a complex with amines.
Also, in almost every write-up on rhodiums page, the TMA-2 is crashed out of toluene using either direct gassing or pre-gassed toluene. If you cant crash this stuff with HCl, what can you use? Sulfuric?
Not be contrary or anal, but SWID would hardly call what he wrote a 'write up'. More like a regurgitation from memory after a lot of work that resulted in failure and frustration. SWID is only now, several years after beginning this hobby, gotten into the habit of taking notes so that the experiment may be relayed to others in a concise manner. Ironically, a few months ago, he would have called it a 'write-up'.
Looking back at that thread, SWID never returned to mentioned that HCl will preferentially eat up U-Zn-B(s) over aluminum, resulting very shortly in no catalyst and a lot of solvated ions.
SWID also forgot to mention he tried the U-Al-A write-up from Rhodiums page, followed it to the letter, and ended up with yet another flask filled with a sky-blue polymerized crap. But, again, he used CaCl2 as his drying agent in all steps. And toluene pre-gassed with HCl.
It was at this point that he decided to seek out a new method. The Urushibara looks great on paper, and even has at least one claim from an Senior Bee that it works. SWID could just never make it happen though.