Fina Formula

by: Bill Roberts

EDIT: Further update -- I don't use any benzyl benzoate prior to filtering. This has the advantage of preventing a sticky, binder substance present in the pellets from ever going into solution, which makes filtering much easier. Method posted towards end of thread.

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Rainjack requested I start a thread and not having any particular other ideas, why not my current Fina formula?

Now, there have been various ones published at various times so it could be that a reason why not is everyone is perfectly satisfied with their current formula.

But on the chance not, as this has I think certain advantages, this is my current method:

To a clean bottle e.g. a 100 ml vial is added the planned amount of Fina pellets, up to a maximum of 6 grams. This may be done in an aseptic way by breaking the corners of the top of each cartridge immediately prior to being added, and using the top to hold back the pellets of all rows except, in turn, each row being poured into the bottle.

The planned total volume is, in mL, 16.67 times the number of grams of pellets used.

To this is added a volume of benzyl benzoate equal to 1/10th the planned total volume. The bottle is stopped with a septum, the septum is pierced with an insulin syringe without plunger, and the bottle is placed in a water bath warmed to 70 degrees C. If there is no thermostatic control the exact temperature is not important but I would not much exceed 70 C (158 F) and it is satisfactory to be somewhat cooler.

A couple of hours are allowed for the pellets to dissolve. It is helpful to occasionally swirl or (with care to keep septum in place; insulin needle can be temporarily removed) shake the bottle. The dissolution process is ended when there are no visible pieces of pellets left. The mixture is allowed a few minutes to cool to about room temperature. (The cooling aids in the filler forming larger rather than smaller particles.)

At this point, Wesson oil is added to volume. It is more convenient and more easily aseptic to previously have established what fill point corresponds to the desired total volume, rather than having to measure out oil.

The insulin pin is removed, the bottle is inverted and swirled a few times to mix contents equally, and the bottle is allowed to settle.

The above-described process is started preferably at least a week before the preparation is needed. Two weeks or a month are better yet. It is possible though to use on a same-day basis, simply a little more trouble at the last step.

The last step is to, either as material is needed or as a job done all at once, to pour portions of the resulting oil solution into a 3 mL syringe to which an 0.45 micron disposable syringe filter is attached (nylon is a good choice) and dispense into a vial or vials.

The only somewhat-nuisance part of this method is that the filter tends to clog rapidly. The less time that was given in advance for the formulation to settle, the more rapid the clogging but there is always some degree of it.

An efficient means of dealing with this is, upon clogging occurring, to invert the syringe, draw back the plunger so as to recover almost all prepartion from the filter, cap the syringe with a needle and cover, and then draw ethanol or methanol up through the syringe filter with another syringe a few times to clean it. It can thus be reused many times.

If ethanol is used, the ethanol need be removed only by inverting the syringe and drawing the ethanol out, expelling the ethanol from the syringe, and then gently using the syringe to push out any remaining ethanol; if methanol is used it is preferable to also let the filter dry before reuse.

On the filter having been cleaned and made ready again for use, the same syringe used before to dispense the preparation may be used again, thus resulting in saving the fraction of an mL that remained from the previous dispensing.

That's it!

The resulting product is nice bright, even brilliant canary yellow with no trace of brown tinge or any cloudiness of any kind. Any preparation which does not meet this description contains undesired substances.

Now as to the why's:

Why no benzyl alcohol? Finaplix is composed of not only trenbolone acetate but also a filler (I think it is methylcellulose) and benzyl alcohol has ability to solubilize this filler. Even after oil is added, some methylcellulose I believe remains in solution. This is undesirable because it is metabolically inert and I am not sure it can be cleared from the injection site. Of course the amounts are extremely small, I am not saying it's a big deal, but from the standpoint of idealism, it's better not to have that.

Of course another way of solving that is using purification methods beforehand such as recrystallization or chromatography which I used to use, but that is so much more bother and this method produces a result which appears just as bright and clean.

Finaplix also has some degree, very slight when new but not zero, of what I assume is oxidized trenbolone acetate and is a brownish substance. Benzyl alcohol is also a powerful solvent of this material, but oil is not and an oil/BB solution also seems not to be.

Why 60 mg/mL? It is true that more concentrated formulations can be made but injecting reasonable volumes of vegetable oil if anything has the positive effect of a natural and subtle topical size increasing effect. It is easier to dissolve at 60 mg/mL, easier to filter, just generally easier and it is plenty, as for example 120 mg/day is a quite effective dose.

"Fina cough" is also about or actually zero with this method unless injected too rapidly or unless injected into the bloodstream. Although in general products with moderate concentration of benzyl alcohol don't cause coughing, for some reason the combination of Finaplix and benzyl alcohol, or higher concentration Fina preparations than this, can cause it.

The efficiency of the method is quite high. I have not measured it but I would think over 95%. Almost all the oil can be poured off while leaving the sediment behind pretty much as a hardpack assuming that reasonable time was allowed for settling.

At the price of only, what is it, something like $17 per gram and the ease of this method, it is really hard to beat for efficiency. Even 120 mg/day is only about $2 per day to use.

EDIT/UPDATE: It is an improvement to the method to not use heat to dissolve. Followup post at current end of thread will explain.

Oh, and as further thoughts on dosing:

Those who may have read my stuff from way back when may recall that I used to always say 50 mg/day. The reason for that was, in those days, every single other steroid writer treated trenbolone -- the generally available form being Parabolon -- as being practically nuclear, quite toxic, and something that a pro bodybuilder was brave to be using at two Parabolan per week, which would correspond (as the molecular weight is different) to 100 mg of TA per week.

However I knew athletes that used a Parabolan per day. This was considered extreme dosage but only by reputation: actually there was not the slightest trace of problem.

So when I was recommending 50 mg/day this was considered by previous standards to be quite extreme, even perhaps crazy, but in fact it was the highest proven-safe dosage. At that point. It was effective and had I recommended more yet, I would have been recommending something I did not know for a fact was safe.

However time has shown that at least triple that amount is still safe.

So although 50 mg/day remains as effective as it ever was when combined with a good oral or with lots of T, even more can be obtained with a higher dose and if the price is good, as it is with homemade (and is NOT the case with Mexican stuff that I'm aware of) then why not?

Secondly, just as a convenient way to use daily doses that are not exact multiples of the concentration of the preparation: If for example you'd like to use 90 mg/day but don't want to inject one-and-a-half cc per day (why do an extra injection that's only half a mL?) then this does not mean you need a 90 mg/mL preparation, but rather a less concentrated preparation can be used somewhat more frequently than once per day.

For example, moving up the injection time 8 hours each day, so the time between injections is 16 hours instead of 24, results in a daily dose 50% higher than what each injection is. So, for example, a 60 mg/mL prep that's injected each 16 hours yields 90 mg/day, if for whatever reason this was preferred instead of using, for example, 2 mL each 24 hours to give 120 mg/day.

Anyway, the point is, it's not needed to have a high concentration simply because one wants to use a value somewhat higher than the per-mL concentration of the product. One can just move up the injection frequency moderately and appropriately.