Using brands not working?

[Conradus]

Anyone know how these brands work? I got Brand of Fire and Brand of Earth. According to Brand of Fire:

Increases Progress. Progress doubles when recipe affinity is fire.
Efficiency: 100% (200%) Success Rate: 90%

Now thing is I tried using it instead of Basic Synthesis making a Mythril Ingot which required a Fire Shard and 2x Mythril Ore. I expected the progress bar to shoot up to 64/64 but instead it only went as far as 39/64 which is the same progress I get from using Basic Synthesis. Here's the stuff on Basic Synthesis:

Increases progress.
Efficiency: 100% Success Rate 90%

So what am I missing? Why is efficiency using a fire shard only 100% instead of 200%?

Because using a fire shard is not fire affinity. Only a very few recipes have a elemental affinity and they are clearly marked when you use them. Mostly they seem to involve reabilitating "poor" items into Vintage ones.