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Tincturing a 150 million years old aromatic raw material
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post #1 of 15
6/3/12 at 3:34am
Thread Starter 


Tincturing fossil amber.
Is it possible to extract enough smell out of it to wear as a perfume?
see the full repotr at http://profumo.it/perfume/ambergris/...r_tincture.htm



As soon as the tincture is ready, free samples will be available at STC.
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post #2 of 15
6/3/12 at 3:55am
This is very interesting.
Also because it will proof if is possible to have the fossil amber tincture.
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post #3 of 15
6/3/12 at 6:00am
Thread Starter 
Maybe yes, maybe no.
I do the experiment because I do not believe that it is possible. Let us see for sure if I have been wrong upholding this view.
We shall know in a week or two...
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post #4 of 15
6/4/12 at 1:46am
It would be great if it would work but I also have my doubts, but we'll see.
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post #5 of 15
6/4/12 at 4:51am
This thread will be of great interest as tincturing is something I love doing. If the substance smells, then there should be no reason for it not to work. Amber is a resinous substance, so it should yield itself to the alcohol eventually. Are you using grain alcohol?
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post #6 of 15
6/4/12 at 5:50pm
I had the chance to smell a sample of Amber essence Oil made by Eden Botanicals ( http://www.edenbotanicals.com/essenc...rfume-oil.html ) and it was like you said smelling like a faint rubber (some synthetic bathroom cleaners smell) and faded spices. The oil was waxy like texture and the smell did not project much. Your bag looks like you just came from AlaaDin cave Profumo, are you familiar with "Kahraman" or fragrant pressed Amber. Do you know how it was made? and would you get more fragrance by tincturing it instead of the natural one?
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post #7 of 15
6/5/12 at 7:26pm
Question: what are your physical techniques to make this tincture? Do you shake the tincture each day, twice a day? Do you heat it? Is it kept in a warm or a cool place? In the light or in the dark? How do you ensure complete transfer of the odour molecules from the amber to the alcohol.

Also: to answer mumsy, I'm pretty sure that Salaam uses pure 95.5% ethanol in his work.
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post #8 of 15
6/6/12 at 1:13pm
Thread Starter 
I use 96° grain alcohol.
I always shake tinctures several times a day sor several days until the raw material becomes solved in the alcohol, but I doubt that fossil amber solves itself into alcohol . I use it at room temperature.
I do not believe either it can solve into liquid CO2, but I shall ask Roberto the chemist.
I believe it can be solved into acetone or some chemical solvent but have not experimented yet.
Remember that I did the experiment in order to prove wrong those who pretended that fossil amber could produce a perfume (a 150 million years fossil resin), but the experiment could prove ME wrong.
Masstika, I do not know Kahraman, but the arabic name of amber is Kahrabah, which means electricity, as the greek name for amber Electron, because of its electric properties.
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post #9 of 15
6/6/12 at 10:57pm
This is very interesting! I have Baltic amber and it certainly has no discernable scent. I also think it unlikely but am waiting to see the results. I'd always assumed amber oil was from ambergris.
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post #10 of 15
6/7/12 at 12:28am
I had always assumed amber was a resin and then got fossilised. If Hyrax pee can be fossilised and then tinctured, then it would follow that amber should work in technical terms, but as there would appear to be very little smell in terms of the amber substance before tincturing, then the tincture could not smell very much even if it did work. I cannot see however that just a few weeks would prove anything at all. I would imagine a year in tincture would be needed at least.

I found this online:-
Composition and formation
Amber is heterogeneous in composition, but consists of several resinous bodies more or less soluble in alcohol, ether and chloroform, associated with an insoluble bituminous substance. Amber is a macromolecule by free radical polymerization of several precursors in the labdane family, e.g. communic acid, cummunol, and biformene.[13] These labdanes are diterpenes (C20H32) and trienes, equipping the organic skeleton with three alkene groups for polymerization. As amber matures over the years, more polymerization takes place as well as isomerization reactions, crosslinking and cyclization.
The average composition of amber leads to the general formula C10H16O.
Formation
Molecular polymerization, resulting from high pressures and temperatures produced by overlying sediment, transforms the resin first into copal. Sustained heat and pressure drives off terpenes and results in the formation of amber.

People use it for violin strings and looking online, the dissolving options people have tried when using it for bows seem to have been these:-
1) - Acetone, followed by naphtha, then crushed and the volatiles boiled off.
2) - Chloroform (Used when releasing the insects for study and takes about two hours apparently)
3) - From Violin Varnish and how to make it by G. Foucher 1911 - "In its natural state it is not soluble in alcohol nor essence of turpentine nor essential oils. It can, however, be dissolved by the following process. Place some in a clean earthenware vessel and heat it gradually, when melted pour on to a marble slab, when it becomes hard again reduce it to powder. It can then be readily dissolved in spirit, essence of turpentine and also in all the oils extracted by the distillation of tar." (Found from another persons posting only)
Someone else said that the heating is supposed to change the chemical bond, rendering it dissolvable.
4) - alcoholic solution of potash.

(I cannot vouch for the success of any of these but am just repeating what I have discovered online)

Still reading.... and it appears that you must first heat it to between 300 and 500 degrees, depending on the amber type, then crush it and it will then dissolve in the alcohol (apparently).
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post #11 of 15
6/11/12 at 1:26am
Thread Starter 
BShell, better talk about sellers privately. However a I do not think that a 35000 years old resin has become amber yet, in the sense of jewellery amber.
Baltic Amber is estimated to be up to 300 million years old. This is indeed a huge difference.
All what I have read about absolute or oil or essential oil of fossil Amber do not refer to Baltic Amber 100 million years old or more.
I still do not believe in these, but apparentely something is coming out of the tincture.
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post #12 of 15
6/13/12 at 1:44am
Fascinating. It would appear that an understanding of polymerisation would yield a clue as to how and why it may release any scent. The volatile part of amber must be the terpenes and these would, in theory, have all dissipated with time. A million years or so may just be enough...

It will be very interesting to see what smell will come of this.
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post #13 of 15
6/13/12 at 3:07pm
Dear profumo:
What I posted was a link to another website that sells a fossilized amber perfume product made by "destructive rectification" of 350,000,000 year old amber from the "Himalayan region". The terms in quotes are vague, so who knows what the stuff is? They say that it is "Pleasantly smokey, resinous, leathery, woody-dry with hints of pine & balsamic overtones; somewhat sweet & reminiscent of red-wine, with smooth amber undertones." It dissolves in ethanol and in oils. I am guessing however, that since this material is from India, it may be adulterated in some way.

My point in adding this to the discussion is to say that you may have some success in your experiment as it appears that someone else in the world is selling a product made from 350,000,000 year old fossilized amber. I don't know where you found the 35,000 year number in your reply above. That was not on the website that I originally posted on this list.
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post #14 of 15
8/7/12 at 1:27am
Whatever became of this?
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post #15 of 15
8/7/12 at 8:25am
Thread Starter 
Davodo, there are indeed news after 2 month of tincturing the material. see https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Vi...0719107?ref=hl
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