That area was honestly fine for me. No real buildup
Hello FC,
I have been hammering the Anvil for a year now, and it has never failed. With a little cleaning it still looks brand new. A short soak in iso to remove resin and Barkeepers Friend to quickly remove tarnish and restore shine. Never needed to take out the screens, and beyond an occasional iso swab the bowl requires no cleaning. Steel discolors with heat and after thousands of cycles the clicker housing and threads have developed a golden brown tarnish. The bowl itself is well isolated from conducted heat and remains untarnished, and the condenser shows no discoloration.
Vestratto has no explicit warranty and items should be inspected on arrival for defects. Their website states that used items cannot be returned.
The underside of the condenser head sits just above the oven base, but in disassembly as the oven pulls the condenser out the two surfaces are pressed together. An accumulation of resin can make the condenser hard to remove, in which case a dip in iso should release it. If the Anvil is left uncleaned for a year, however, any resin will be set hard and the condenser could be difficult to remove without force, and then both the condenser and the oven could be scratched as the oven is pulled and twisted against the stuck condenser. The Viton o-rings are safe in isopropyl alcohol and old dry resin will loosen with a longer soak.
The stainless steel and pure copper of the Anvil should not spontaneously fail in normal usage and any damage that suddenly appears is likely from user error. Bimetallic clickers can begin to degrade as combustion temperature is approached and they gradually click later with each overheating, but the Anvil's clickers are well calibrated and there is no need to ever heat beyond the second click. Only the o-rings might eventually need replacing but otherwise the Anvil should last forever.
I wish Vestratto had suggested this possibility a couple weeks ago when i emailed them. Idk if that’s what caused the damaged metal, but it’s at least a possibility.
I do want to clarify though for me specifically, i recently used the anvil for a handful of bowls before ordering new Anvil parts to try out. I ordered the new parts from vestratto and proceeded to clean the vape to prepare for the xl mouthpeice and other parts i ordered.
This deep clean of mine had a spotless mouthpiece, and a pretty clean condensor too when dissassembling (before cleaning it). So, that year of tbreak with the anvil stored must have been at least somewhat clean, otherwise i would have saw a lot of stuff coming off into the iso and the buildup would have shown in the condenser tube and mouthpiece. It was an excessive cleaning on my part and that’s how i felt while doing it, there was only some problem areas of cleaning the vape (namely the damaged copper core).
I appreciate you offering a possible explanation and i can’t 100% rule it out, but i will say that this deep clean i was doing was an already pretty clean vape overall. I believe i cleaned before storing the Anvil for my year longbreak, took it out for a handful of bowls after that long break without cleaning it beforehand. I hit the bowl and loved the experience. Then decide to get some new parts to expand my anvil experience in various ways. I deep cleaned the vape in anticipation of my order even though it seems clean enough by my normal standards, i wanted it pristine when trying the new parts, that’s what i do when ever doing ordering new stuff for a vape. I would clean out my glass for a wpa even if the glass had only seen a single dry sessions before me cleaning it again. My deep clean was unnecessarily deep lol, i get that the term implies a huge mess but that’s not the case here.
I won’t rule anything out, i feel like maybe i would have noticed the damaged metal when first getting the vape, but i did barely dissassemble it because i only only got the anvil a couple months before my break. So it’s not something I inspected numerous times because i juggled other vapes and only cleaned the anvil a couple times before packing it up.
Regardless, I was told they would be willing to replace my damaged copper core if i paid to ship it to them. I followed up saying I would do that but never got an email back with further instructions. I would have not been writing much further on here if Vestratto was more responsive and just provided more clarity overall. I wasn’t going to post anymore because i don’t want to bring down the vibes here like i have been, but the only reason i brought things here is because emails to Vestratto felt like tossing words into the void. This gave me at least some sort of feedback. Also, thanks to everyone that provided condensor cleaning tips, but i have an important question, why didn’t Vestratto provide me with those solutions instead? Why did I have to come here to figure out a way to even test if my condensor has something besides stubborn buildup going on?
I logged out of my account hours ago because I felt i was bringing bad vibes in and not letting others share this thread, and im sorry for that. But i do want to thanks those that tried to help me in various ways. I logged back in to write this because i at least want to defend myself here and explain things further, i felt i would look bad and felt misrepresented without clarifying my own particular situation in more detail.
So i hope vestratto stands by their own word and replaces my copper core. I know i’ve been overly harsh here and im sorry for that, but i do want to say that besides me wanting a working anvil again, i also want vestratto to succeed. In the end im grateful for what they’ve brought to the table for vaping. It’s an entirely unique device for me that plays with my personality in a way that feels both freeing and restraining all at once (im a temp stepper). I only have the Anvil and Vestratto to thank for that expansion of my vaping style.
But I come from a background of the MFLB, Da Vinci IQ and a Da Buddha. The Da Buddha i broke glass with by dropping it, I bought glass to replace it after accepting I had messed up lol. The IQ, Da Vinci replaced for me after a user error of me deep cleaning incorrectly, was genuinelly surprised by that one and i probably didn’t deserve it but Da Vinci did it anyways. Mflb i had replaced by taking a picture of my mflb after smashing it with a hammer, they sent me a brand new mflb that hadn’t gone through hammer time (i oversimplified the process for fun here tbh lol). Incredible cs from each experience and was always even better than i could expect.
For Vestratto, i don’t expect that level of giving, im willing to accept those are different devices with different costs and they offer different warranties. I get it. But I just look at the Anvil and i get that warm fuzzy feeling about it, and it sucks to not be able to at least say they will respond to you through emails in some sort of timeley manner and will help you as best as they can within reason. I can’t really say that about them atm, in the future, i have to recommend the anvil to people and then add in the qualifier that you better hope that you don’t have to deal with the cs though. and that really sucks to have to add that to the description of such a great vape.
So ultimately, i just want them to do better with future customers, i don’t want to see others bringing in the vibes that I have because the response time is 6+ business days instead of the 2 mentioned on the website. That can be prevented though. That’s the truth, and it doesn’t mean you have to hand out free anvils like old school mflb cs, it just means the communication needs to get better and better help should be offered (refer to consensor cleaning instructions on this thread).
Sorry if this all rambles too much, wrote this slightly toasted lol. But i wanna say thanks everyone for letting me talk your ears off these last few days haha. Im gonna bow out of my account for now and let the anvil thread move forward.
I hope Vestratto helps me like they said they would and I hope my order is still on route. I hope to be vaping on that anvil again sometimes soon, but for now, im gonna leave that to you guys. Enjoy the Anvil my dudes, peace
