No need to 'mash' plant material after its in basified water, that sounds dangerous. I suggest rather reading Noman's tek for STB instead. Powder your bark before putting in water and then youre fine to pull as soon as its basified and mixed
There are some stories of glass cracking and accidentally breaking when people moved the pot around. I suspect most of these cases are because of sudden temperature changes when adding lye, and not because of lye actually etching the glass (though that can happen with longer time).. So when you add lye, be sure to keep mixing so that the temperature change isnt concentrated in one spot but is more gradual and over the whole solution. Also its recommended if possible, just in case, to have your container in an easy-to-clean place in case something happens, and be sure to wear safety equipment.
Theoretically good glass (borosilicate) should store very strong lye solutions for months/years without a problem, but after a long time lye can react with glass (according to benz, forming some kind of sodium-silicate complex). Though personally in my experience even using cheaper glass containers, just making sure there is no sudden temperature change when mixing, I never had any problem (yet?), no cracking no nothing, specially if just storing the lye for a couple of days for an extraction. Maybe others that did have problems can chime in and share what happened with them. In any case just work carefuly and dont forget safety equip, avoid storing the lye solutions for too long and try to use quality glass, maybe changing container after a few extractions.
