did you forget to offer the chicken three piece meal sacrifice before you began? sometimes people forget to ask chutulu, respect him and he bless you
seriously though your fine, the sequence of how things are added together will not have any effect other than possible extreme variance in local ph levels when everything is first added (ie anything the lye touch before it dissolves will be exposed to an extremely high ph for a short time)
one thing to consider is that if your trying to extract an entire pound at once is that there may not be enough surface exposure to the alkali water to properly get the desired alkaloids to come out, at those numbers you should be using more than a 5 gallon drum. try shaking it up some more and consider separating out what you have now into smaller batches (or get a larger container).
also give the shear mass of bark, give it more time to sit around, its going to take a long time till everything is out of that pound so move everything to a cast iron or stainless steel pot and let it sit for a while, say in excess of three days, occasionally stirring it, but its your decision.
have patience, for the love of bleep, both in time and the size of the project, have patience.
good luck
