So my friend has done several extractions so far. I thought I would share his experiences so far. He first tried Noman's tek exactly as it is suggested including increasing the water 1.5x to 2.0x for powdered bark. He got very little out of it. About 50mg from 50g of mhrb.
He then took the advice in the notes by Etropmancer in the next solution he created and used that ratio instead, i.e., increasing the lye and not increasing the water. He did the sc wash but no r-ex. He got about .7g out of 100 g mhrb.
Somewhat disappointed with the yield he decided most recently to do Cyb's ATB hybrid tek and boom!: He got the infamous 2% yield - 4.1g out of 200g of bark!
A disclaimer though. The bark used in Cyb's tek was from a different source so there is definitely a chance that part of the increase in yield was from the quality of bark itself. I really think there is something to this tek though. Maybe not so much his specifically but A/B teks in general. If the extra step of heating in an acid didn't do anything why would the extra step be there? It makes sense that it is just a better tek.
My friend hasn't done that many teks but he has read though many of them. From experience, Cyb's tek is the best beginner tek. There is an extra step, yes, but it is a simple extra step. The whole tek is simple, clear, with pictures and specific about quantities. This cannot be said about many other teks. Noman's tek has some vagueness about what exactly the ratios should be in the remarks at the bottom. This is confusing. No pictures either. I'm not knocking Noman's tek or anything necessarily but from experience, Cyb's tek seem to be the best for beginner's.
Anyways, Cyb, if you're out there, thanks for the awesome tek!
The struggle to free myself of restraints becomes my very shackles.
Note: All claims by this poster represent the thoughts of a fictional interdimensional hyper-being and are not representative of any actual or real life experiences, ideas or thoughts.