hello, i hope this finds you well, i recomend instead of starting from the very beggining, why not out source half the steps to China!!! id say look for a chemical called 2-phenylcyclohexanone, if you can then id reccomend buying as youll be 2 steps away from nedck. You can allwasy make this via grignards but again, please just purchase it lol. First you should disolve the 2-phenylcyclohexanone in a 50/50 mix of ethyl acetate and dcm and start to heat it up. Next, pour in a slurry of 2 mol equiv of CuBr2 and reflux for a couple of hours. Now remove the solvent using a rotovap or juss leave it next to a fan for a while and reduce it till a dry powder, perform a simple recrys for the bromo ketone however WATCH OUT. THIS IS A LACHRAMATOR!. After your new crystals have grown, time for the fun part. Dissolve 100 grams (0.348 mol) of your farm to table Bromoketone into 300cc of N-Methylpyriodine as your solvent. Add 132ml (1.74 mol) of 40% aqueous methylamine and leave stiring for 24 hours. Finally, pour numerous portions of toluene into the reaction mix and stir. Collect the organic phases and and salt out your final product. The best part is, this can make as many different ketalogues as youd like, stay safe and dont do this unless you know what youre doing. NMP is very toxic, the alpha-BromoKetone will cause hyou to cry if you get less than a miligram on your hands and you brush your face, trust me from experiance when i say it hurts