Well, to answer SWIR's own question:
Yes, some gaks do definitely carry over after the SPD and water rinses.
The process went as follows:
4 boxes generic 120's were ground up, then mixed with clear ammonia. Just enough to make the 'marshmallow' result easily mixable, but not stiff. (Sorry, no ml measurement at the time). Washing soda was then added IN SMALL INCREMENTS. SWIR isn't sure why this makes a difference, but it does. Adding it too fast, in large amounts doesn't allow the mixture to become liquid enough. 2X the pill mass volume of washing soda was added over time.
Xylene was added to this to equal 3X the volume of PM+Sodium Carbonate. After thorough stirring, the mixture was allowed to settle and poured through a cotton ball filter. This was done 3X. Of the 9.6g theoretical total possible yield, SWIR got 7.1g for a total of 74% yield, a tad high.
The pfedHCL was then washed once with MEK, allowed to dry again, then a 25%NaOH solution was added to the pfed HCl to freebase. This was filtered and rinsed with ice water 3X, then allowed to dry (THIS TAKES DAYS!).
The resulting dried pfed freebase was melted in a 500ml erlenmeyer flask with a test tube cold finger, half at a time. The hotplate was turned up in small increments until melting was noted, allowed to sit at this temp for 30min, then cooled. This was repeated 5 or 6 times. The crystals that were dumped out and scraped off the test tube were AMAZING Thin. Feathery. Perfect.
All of the crystals were collected, then washed with ice cold distilled water again. After drying, the crystals were dissolved in VM&P Naptha (hot) and the naptha was gassed to get the pfed HCl.
This was again rinsed with MEK, 2X.
After drying, the yield at this point was 4.2 g. A much more realistic yield for SWIR at 44%.
This was reacted via the old LWR, 4.2gE, 3.4gMBRP and 5.1gI, and allowed to cook for 72 hours. All regular reaction signs were noted.
At the end of the cook, yellowish 'worms' of plastic looking gak were seen in the rp. These were fished out, total weight of these were less than .2g. However, they were there, no further tests so gak was unknown.
Usual workup of post reaction, then gassing yielded 2.8g of methHCl. Initial bioassay results were FanFUCKINGtabulous even before recrystallization. Crystallization (SLOW) is ongoing. Burn test was pure as the driven snow.