Vampire wrote:

Don't forget you can compound copper ore + copper ore. You can get materials and armor and recompound it.

And yeah you can compound a seed with any rank 1 item. Kojika has said countless of times you can just use junk and compound that.

I might be wrong but I think you get +1 skill exp from making a seed, and +2 from making a piece of armor.

Can anyone confirm this?

Ahh thanks for the info. For the last question, I'm not too sure myself, but isn't the proficiency increase based on how many successful (i. e. compounds leads to a rank jump of the final result)? That's the reason why people suggests the seed method, small wooden gear method and the ore method, since these compounds always lead to a rank increase of the final item that is obtained.