Crafty/Crafty+ by Storz & Bickel

kimura said:

in my opinion, the miniVAP basket serves no purpose when you just drop it in the bowl and install the cooling unit on top of it. it just acts as a heat sink, absorbing heat that might otherwise be going into the herb. it's not eliminating conductive or radiant heat transfer because the basket gets really hot. I don't recommend doing that.

for pure convection with the crafty/mighty, you've got to use it without the cooling unit, as previously illustrated. the heat is removed from the load whenever you aren't taking a draw. I just use a miniVAP when I want to do this, but the crafty/mighty works well like this too if you want pure convection and want to avoid losing any actives to the cooling unit

still loving my Crafty, and no problems whatsoever. so incredibly handy (crafty!) for quick stealth sessions around the house and around town. hopefully some of you guys are just clumsy all with the braking plastic and such

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Tried a few full convection hits with the Crafty and the Lotus pipe and WA but I think I prefer that touch of conduction and radiation... Faster vapor production and shorter hits are what I gain I believe.
The Crafty is so well thought of in every detail that I find it hard for another vape to surpass it in the near future... Newer vapes might have something but still not everything the Crafty offers. From loading to vaping to unloading it's just a nice comfortable experience. It just lets you enjoy your herbs. It just works! Reminds me of something...

When I heat up my filled bowl without CU there is quite some good amount of vapor escaping around the bowl because the stainless steel border is attached to the heater directly and cooks the herbs anyway... Perhaps it's me and I don't get what some mean by convection, conduction and radiation. But unless you don't put a Teflon ring like the MV's in the bowl or simply the MV's basket to use a material with less heat transmission than S&B's stainless steel bowl you just reduce heat build up by removing the CU (some little radiation are permitted to escape upwards), not reducing conduction I would guess.
Like in the kitchen, if you open the pan you loses heat build up under the cover. The pan is still hot and could even burn your food...

In my opinion, the basket acts identically in the MV as heat sink, pollen sieve, handle small loads and keep unit clean. no difference in the crafty. That's why Hermes wants you to use the basket with green and red only, because it sinks heat.
Remember the basket gets really hot in the MV, too. Isn't it the same conduction and radiation process from the basket holding the material here when using gcmv, just like in the S&B units?

Just think of the MV. If you change the Teflon bowl with the decarb kit or even the gcmv and load the bowl directly, do you really think to achieve pure convection like you said by only removing the lid? It isn't possible with Crafty to achieve pure convection when you let sit the bowl in it for more than some seconds (directly loaded even less than with basket). Perhaps when constantly drawing without pause to cool down the stainless steel boarder but this will cool down the heater as well. But you can change the signature of vapes by tweaking them, for sure...

Pure Convection should be possible with the flexicone and the basket when you remove the load when not hitting to prevent further heat transfer (conduction).
Remember conduction needs time. It's the process of thermal conductivity through a material depending on time. This is why thermal conductivity is mesured in Watt x seconds, see?
Like holding a metal in the flame until heat goes trough it to your hands...

@adam_baumm
You are right, pressure and heat can be absorbed if the material isn't to thin. Think of a full block of heat resistant Polymer. Won't crack ever. It's the other extreme compared to the ultra-thin S&B housing.


Edit: weird text , edited to clarify my thoughts just coming out like
If ever something is hard to understand or misleading please criticize!

kolila said:

@h3rbalist bro, has does crafty vapour compare to the plenty vapour?

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Kind of the same, except the Plenty hits harder tastes stronger and effects more as it uses more herb due to the larger bowl size and heating element.

I loved my Plenty so much, if I could have sourced enough good weed to keep using it I would never have sold it.

Just acquired some pink and loaded into the crafty. It was sublime, never ending clouds.

Gram for gram pink has always given me the highest quantity of bags in my Cano. The crafty loves it as well!!

Wtf is pink? I want it, too.

Michel said:

Wtf is pink? I want it, too.

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Pink Kush. Personally one of my favourite strains.

Being a solo owner and considering purchasing a crafty, is there that much difference between the two to justify making the purchase?

At 57 hours, and I can no longer get 3 bowls out of a full charge.

I say stick with the solo. I heard nothing but good things about it. I love my crafty, but with the battery starting to go after 2 months, and with pieces braking off it, it's not perfect.

Deano said:

Being a solo owner and considering purchasing a crafty, is there that much difference between the two to justify making the purchase?

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I'm at 46 hours in 2 months, most of those hours are double sessions. I've used it in crowded areas, hotel rooms in the car, everywhere, basically. Using the app, u can turn the lights off and it's super stealthy, easy to Palm. There is almost no draw resistance, you get huge clouds right away. It's effortless to use... u get where I'm going , lol.

In regards to battery I get 4 bowls per charge, or about 7 half bowls. It all depends on how fast u want to take it down. doesn't seem to be degrading and everything else has been rock solid so far. I highly recommend one!

I'm at 81 hours since Christmas getting 3 bowls per charge now (4 charges when unit was new). But I try to never run it down and not charge when cold/hot or in use.

Crafty outperforms solo in every term apart batterie life and easiness to clean (and durability )

So it's just up to you. When you just read down the pros and cons on FC and consider price and the faults of it probably you could say no. When hitting and tasting first time you want a backup unit or a mighty just in case...

Thanks guys! I love my solo. It's the first vape I've tried and owned. The second was a flowermate 5.0s and for me it personally got too hot and the vapor quality was warm and harsh due to the short vapor path. The unit could've been defective but I was able to return it for a full refund thanks to the awesome customer service at PuffItUp!

So now I'm considering replacing the flowermate with a crafty. I considered a stealthy pen style vape but I'm such a huge fan of tasty hits that I'm almost unwilling to sacrifice that for anything else.

I recently sent my Crafty in and thought I'd share the experience.

My crafty was a 79X serial number and was unable to connect to Android devices running Lolipop. S&B confirmed I needed to send it in for a firmware update.
I shipped just the base wrapped in newspaper in a USPS small flat rate box. Cost me ~$6 to ship from AK to CA. S&B turned it around the day after they received it. My total time without the Crafty was 7 days [Monday to Monday]
The return package contained a different base unit with a 571X serial number. The unit was clearly used since there was a little grime noticeable between the plastic and metal parts of the bowl. They packaged it in the original box, with no accessories whatsoever.

Firmware on the new unit is 2.06. The new unit had the same number of hours [37].

New unit works great and it's very nice to be able to use the app on my primary device again.

4 hours of crafty usage so far and I love this thing, I'm on v 2.05. Minus the sub-par battery live and 3 bowl max, it hits as hard or better than most home units. The 2 amp usb 2.0 limitation doesn't help charging time and there is not a true pass through charging ability, but this thing rocks as a portable and if you want a home unit S&B will hook you up there as well.

So, I was disappointed with my PAX's stock battery so I did some battery swappage (experienced with soldering) with a $15 Panasonic 18650 3400mah battery and boom increased it's life about 30-40% over the made in china stock battery, which I'm sure they used instead to save money. I was hoping S&B would use the highest life battery in the crafty but when I opened mine, just to look at the inside, I saw a what I THINK is a 18650 with "made in Germany 3.7/4.2v 2700mah" written on it.

Anyone know if the crafty stock battery is swappable to a higher capacity than this? Or is this the best? Obviously this would be voiding the warranty but come time to send it in for a new battery, or as it gets closer to the 2 year warranty end mark, it would be cool to bump the battery life 30% or more if there are better more expensive batteries out there.

Crafty app update available on ios not sure on changes

I thought about the same. The batteries are high quality ones from a german manufacturer but with too low capacity. I don't understand why they toke low capacity batteries for a heavy duty unit like this.
Just make sure the new batterie has the same voltage and about the same or higher charge/discharge rates.

Nuggeteer said:

4 hours of crafty usage so far and I love this thing, I'm on v 2.05. Minus the sub-par battery live and 3 bowl max, it hits as hard or better than most home units. The 2 amp usb 2.0 limitation doesn't help charging time and there is not a true pass through charging ability, but this thing rocks as a portable and if you want a home unit S&B will hook you up there as well.

So, I was disappointed with my PAX's stock battery so I did some battery swappage (experienced with soldering) with a $15 Panasonic 18650 3400mah battery and boom increased it's life about 30-40% over the made in china stock battery, which I'm sure they used instead to save money. I was hoping S&B would use the highest life battery in the crafty but when I opened mine, just to look at the inside, I saw a what I THINK is a 18650 with "made in Germany 3.7/4.2v 2700mah" written on it.

Anyone know if the crafty stock battery is swappable to a higher capacity than this? Or is this the best? Obviously this would be voiding the warranty but come time to send it in for a new battery, or as it gets closer to the 2 year warranty end mark, it would be cool to bump the battery life 30% or more if there are better more expensive batteries out there.

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Not sure on the battery, but did you take any pictures of the internals of this thing ? Would love to see it

Thanks to the user in this forum who suggested the idea (sorry I can't remember who you are!). ...Today I sawed off the connector from a second top piece, and joined it to the stem of a glass bong.

I have to say, Crafty hits through chilled water are INCREDIBLY smooth and potent. Soooooo happy I tried it!!!

h3rbalist said:

Been using these for a couple of weeks, Yes they do reduce the bowl size which is handy and cause more convection and less conduction. Which I have been led to believe would mean more flavor, but in my experience it was the opposite.

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This was my experience, too.

kimura said:

for pure convection with the crafty/mighty, you've got to use it without the cooling unit, as previously illustrated. the heat is removed from the load whenever you aren't taking a draw. I

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I've tried it this way, too (small basket connected to flexicone+, without the cooling unit). I get big hits, but actually prefer the taste with the stock setup (plus a cut screen to tamp down the material).

elmomuzz said:

I'm taking mine to Denver tomorrow for four days so we'll see how it tolerates extended usage...

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update? hehe

bigmouth said:

This was my experience, too.

I've tried it this way, too (small basket connected to flexicone+, without the cooling unit). I get big hits, but actually prefer the taste with the stock setup (plus a cut screen to tamp down the material).

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yeah, I prefer the stock setup as well. If I don't want to deal with the cooling unit I just don't use the Crafty

I might try to make one of those adapters that @elmomuzz crafted

Deano said:

I considered a stealthy pen style vape but I'm such a huge fan of tasty hits that I'm almost unwilling to sacrifice that for anything else.

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Don't get a pen style vape, they are just not there yet, and often there is combustion.

Astedra said:

Don't get a pen style vape, they are just not there yet, and often there is combustion.

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The Grasshopper looks promising.

DoubleVanos said:

Not sure on the battery, but did you take any pictures of the internals of this thing ? Would love to see it

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No, I wedged it open slightly like a sub roll because I didn't want the bottom sticker to come off! I only got a peek. Was hoping I wasn't one of the first people here to look into switching to a higher capacity battery.

Stinky said:

The Grasshopper looks promising.

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Anyone know of a comparison to the crafty?

a bag of it said:

I just found one locally for $380, might do that since I'm impatient and like to support the local shops.

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If you don't mind saying, which local shop in the Boston area did you buy your Crafty for $380?

Is it worth the money?

Thanks!