The Remarks section of Noman's Tek suggests forgoing the Ammonia wash and replacing it with a Sodium Carbonate wash of the Naptha as seen in Step 7 of Vovin's Tek

This all makes perfect sense, but another comment in the Remarks section of Noman's Tek leaves me with a question:
I will be using pre-powdered bark so plan to double the water, but doesn't this also call for a doubling of the amount of lye to keep the pH at the same level as if the water hadn't been doubled?

No, for two reasons:

1) you are using so my lye that doubling the water will not reduce the pH that much. pH runs logarithmicly (I think) not linear. I never learned how to run the calculations correctly, but doubling the water will NOT need a doubling of lye to keep the pH consistant. Others can expand on this better than I.

2) you are using powered bark. The lye does not have as much work to do. Part of the reason a STB works is because the lye eats through the cell walls and exposes the DMT to the solvent. Being ground so fine there is a lot less cell wall to eat through.

Really you can have the pH at 12.0-12.5 when using powdered bark and still have really good yields.

This is why I argued that Lye is not required if you grind it or have it pre-ground. Higher PH does seem to prevent emulssion.

Thanks for the answers! So is the doubling of water when working with powdered bark worth it?

When SWIM did his last Rx he used 750ml of water to 75g powdered RB with 75g of Lye.

shrug experiment, if you get poor results on the pulls, add slightly more lye or if you get lots of emulsion, definately add lye. If when you add Naptha, you do not get 2 layers, you need more water, at least according to SWIM.