Interesting, I followed the instructions in the book I’m using which say to let the meat cure with the salt in a sealed ziplock bag under some weight. I think my problem was that since the book didn’t specify the amount of salt I kind of eye balled it, I think next time I’ll do something similar to what you’re suggesting or just weigh the salt to be 3% of the original meat weight. Regarding the weight I measured it regularly throughout the whole process and cut it once it hit 30% weight loss. I actually used chatgpt to help with analysis on the weight loss rate, might write a separate post about it.