Synthesis of testosterone from DHEA

[Charger1986]

Hello people, I saw this question appear a few times on different forums including this one and by far I saw BREMAC as the person with the most experience and good intentions in helping out wannabe chemists like me in exploring new horizons in their quest to obtain raw steroids from DHEA. Personally from what I read, I trust this guy. We all know how conversion works, but as any chemist that want's to evolve, we need:
1. A good recipe that can be setup in a room, with laboratory glassware. A step by step process.
2. A good website that sells the rest of the chemicals that we need.


I don't care if the raw made by me cost's me more than the raw bought from china, I want to see that I am capable of doing this.
If anyone want's to accept my humble invitation, you are welcomed to participate with some helpful info, put it on this thread and maybe we can figure this out together.

[Charger1986]

This recipe was written by Bremac a few years back:
experimental: DHEA was purchased from china in one kg quantity, methanol or methylhydrate from canadian tire, sodium borohydride from a hydrogen cell engine supplier online fifteen grams for fifteen dollars, good for 60 grams test. 10 grams DHEA dissolved in 400ml methanol and stirred using a milk frother in a regular glass nestled in ice. 2.5 grams sodium boro are slowly added as powder at a rate that does not allow the temp to exceed 40C. if a slurry forms thats good, it means product is forming, just add more cold methanol. after a total of one hour add vinegar until the bubbling on addition stops then dump into a liter of ice water. filter thru coffe filter and squeeze dry. dry in oven at 60C.
activated manganese dioxide is made from manganese dioxide from a ceramics supplier and then its boiled in nitirc acid to activate. make nitric acid by adding boiled down battery acid to stump remover (potassium nitrate) then boiling inside a bottle with a hose running to another bottle nestled in ice to collect the nitric acid. filter and rinse with an anhydrous solvent like a fuel system water remover, activated mang diox must be absolute dry. put the diol from the first step in 300ml acetic acid then slowly add the mang diox as a powder same fashion as above, stir for six to ten hours, you won't over oxidize since exact molar equivalents are used. now flood the reaction with five times volume ice water and filter out the base test plus unreacted diol and DHEA, minimum purity will be about 70%

note we activated mang diox by azeotropic distillation with benzene as we are too lazy to make nitric acid.

75 grams of DHEA can be had for about a buck a gram, all together maybe 2-4 dollars a gram for heat free decent test.

Did anybody try something like this?

[numbere]

There is no cost effective way to synthesize test in a home lab. It would be expensive, yield small amounts, have a high percentage of error, and be very impure. Large companies simplify this process by use a microbe called Pseudomonas Testosteroni which biocatalyzes cholesterol into test.

[Charger1986]

It's kinda disappointig to hear that. It would be ideal for us to eliberate ourselves from chinese imports on raw. We're depending on them and indirectly on customs for our packages to pass. A single big laboratory in Europe and in the US would be enough to make people that brew their own gear....autonomous.
I have a few questions if don't mind numbere.
1. What's your opinion on the recipy posted by bremac?
2. Did you ever tried to extract test from dhea or cholesterol for that matter?

[numbere]

I would never inject myself with a product made from the recipe above because the chemicals used are below laboratory/technical grade. The issue is less about overall purity than about being free of substances that would interfere with important chemical reactions. At the very least one would need ACS reagent grade chemicals which are >95% pure. Once one has the correct ingredients one needs a sanitized lab and proper laboratory equipment. All this is very expensive and why anyone currently manufacturing test relies on a biocatalytic process.

Cholesterol side chain cleavage enzyme costs around $2,000 for 1mg. It's not really an option.

I've never tried to synthesize test because it's relatively inexpensive and my time is not.