"Crashed" Gear
Sometimes I get messages from people, during the cold winter months, saying they see crystals or chucks of white solids in their gear.
It sounds like it may have "crashed" out of solution. If that is the case, it is no big deal and easy to return back into solution. I will explain what I think may have occurred and a way to get it back into solution.
What you may be looking at are simply pure crystals of the active agent.
It has recrystallized ("crashed") which yields those crystals of the compound because they are no longer dissolved.
Recrystallization does occurs sometimes and does not mean the product is bad or dangerous -- nothing to be alarmed about -- it is more common with the less soluble compounds such as props, but can happen with any solution.
re-crystallization ("crashing") actually yields extremely pure crystals of the active substance (recrystallization is a method chemists use to purify compounds; Google search about it for more details).
What occurs is that the solute collects and forms a solid crystal usually because the solution is challenging the solubility of the compound at that concentration and temperature (maybe it cooled at some point or just sat very still for a time).
Mast-Prop and Test-Prop are the ones with which I see this occur most often (in my own personal experience they are the only compounds I have this happen but it is possible with any solution/compound).
Simply warm the oil and shake until you get everything dissolved back into solution.
I use dry rice in a bowl for this purpose (and, in general, to warm oil for smoother injection and to use very small gauge needles such as 27g or 29g).
I keep the same bowl of rice and use it many times. Simply heat the rice in the microwave (without the products -- just warm the rice), check that it is VERY warm but not too hot to touch, and then push your vials down into the warm rice as pictured in the image linked below, until the oil is very warm; I also have used electric heating pads and just set vials folded in the heating pad next to me while I watch TV (some vials take a long time -- I had a mast-prop I left in a cold place during the winter and it took hours to return into solution).
Take them out and shake every couple of minutes, then warm and repeat until all everything is completely dissolved and a transparent homogeneous solution is achieved.
Old photo of how I warm up products using some dry rice. I heated up the rice in the a microwave first, without the vials; then push the vials down into the bowl of hot rice to heat up the products.
