Lets say I were to use Vovin's DMT for the Masses tek. If I were to use pre-powdered MHRB, I'd need to use 1.5 to 2 times the amount of water. What about the lye? Does that double too?

First off, are you talking about using Vovin's tek, or Noman's "DMT for the Masses" tek? There is a pretty big gap in complexity of the two procedures. Second, assuming you're talking about Noman's tek, he mentions using 1g lye per gram of bark. When I was first learning, using Noman's tek, I always used 1g lye per gram of bark. Even when using a little bit more water. If you were to use a significantly greater volume of water, then you might need to adjust the amount of lye. As long as you use enough to get your solution to pH 12-13, you should be good.

Thanks, yeah I was talking about Noman's tek. I was a little spacey when i was typing! I assumed that I was to leave the amount of lye alone, and i guess I was right! Thank you much!

Best of luck to you on your project.

I use way less lye than any tek recommends almost half of that or less
I dont know why but my ph is quickly at the desired level. The lye is 99% maybe thats the reason ?

When trying to reach a desired ph it is determined by the amount of water and lye you use. You should never base how much lye to use on how much bark you use. That just doesn't make sense. for me, I used to use 100g lye, 100g bark, and 1500ml water. That worked fine but I wanted to start using less water. I now use 80g lye, 1200ml water, and 125g bark. That results in the same ph, and I use more bark. So consider how much water it is you are using and NOT how much bark you are using.

It is because STB teks, and even some A/B teks, tend to require *WAY MORE* lye than you will actually need. Since you don't do any damage by overbasifying but can ruin your extraction by underbasifying people commonly recommend using massive amounts just to make sure you hit the desired pH. Most people don't have a pH meter so it is easier to tell them just to use an obnoxious amount of lye.

sounds logical, last time i used half of tek recommendation and had ph 14

You can guess the pH of NaOH and H2O the following way:

This helped me guesstimate the lowest amount of NaOH to be used before starting to pH test my lye + d-h2o solution with litmus paper.

Wow CF that formula was something I've been looking for for a while. And I'm sure a lot of other people have been wanting too. Thank you.

While the formula is useful for determining the pH of a lye/water solution it is important to know that once you drop a bunch of bark into the water it is possible for the pH to go down a bit. You want the pH at 14 or so with the bark in the solution.

That is indeed a good point that I failed to mention alert thank you for bringing that up.

I don't use the formula as an end all be all weight I go with, so keep that in mind. I usually just start somewhere low, whatever weight of NaOH that gets me between 13-14 pH, based on amount of H2O being used then add more progressively until I get the pH I want.