Hunter On occasion when drilling out the nylon handle of the vapor stem, the drill bit will not center correctly and the drilled hole will be slightly larger than required for a good tight interference fit with the SS stem tip. That is probably what happened in your case. Shoot me an email and I will send you another stem. Or try squeezing the SS tip(end that goes in the nylon handle) to a slight out of round shape with pliers. That will give it a better interference fit than you have now. I'll bet that will fix it even. Let me know.
And now for the long awaited news from Zapville. Some important news. We would appreciate any comments or feedback you may have about this news.
Aromazap Announcement
Over the last couple months it has been pretty clear something unusual is going on in Zapville. I have hinted here and there with promises of more info to come. It is time now. We now have a plan in motion to deal with some bumps in the road experienced recently.
First, what happened? The main ‘event’ happened at the Memorial Day weekend. I called and requested some parts from the person who builds our heatports and had also supplied our SS stem tips. The following week no parts received so follow up phone calls from me. No answer. I drive the hour drive one way to the shop to talk to the boss. No boss and no return communication after leaving another message with the boss’s wife. No answer to later phone calls. A similar event happened in early January of this year but we got through it with promises of continued parts supply. This time was different because I can only jump through certain hoops one time. I will bend and beg once but not a second time with the same person.
So I was faced with a finite supply of our fine SS heatport. I did have a good supply in house at the time and very quickly started making stem tips myself so we could continue producing Zaps. I did have to slow the production pace to stretch our inventory. I also slowed my FC thread involvement to begin the wind down process for Zapville. As many of you know, we are in our late ‘60s and also have an ongoing family situation that is anti-Aromazap. We were basically in limbo at that stage. What to do? How to do it? One thing became clear to us during that period.
We made the decision that Rick and Pat will stop making Aromazaps in 2012.
But then what? We just slowly die and continue to supply stems and other accessories plus do any required warranty/service work? That was to be the minimum. We would never leave our many customers cold and in the dark. We are all too familiar with that scenario in the log vape world. If Zapville had to stop making Aromazaps, we would still be here. There was never a question about that.
About a month into our quagmire, our main competitor, Dave of Underdog also entered a new chapter here at FC with the beginning of the materials thread which posed some serious questions about the safety of his vape. During that time Dave Emailed me with some questions about any involvement I may have had in the materials/adhesives thread. I answered those questions and also passed on to Dave a little info about our situation here in Zapville. Then he got back and I got back and we shared some ideas thoughts and dreams.
The real meeting with Dave and Amanda happened this last Sunday/Monday. We met in Hood River Oregon and spent a day getting to know each other. Toby, the Underdog, got to meet Sophie, our Golden Retriever and they had a ball. We stayed in a ‘suite’ with an extra bedroom and were in the woods high on a cliff above the mighty Columbia River. We found many similarities in our shared life philosophies. We got along well. Dave and Amanda are very hard working and focused ‘young people’(mid 30’s) with good values and a very good understanding of how a business must work to be successful. They have both been involved in other businesses before Underdog was started. Amanda still works full time at a good ‘day job’ to relieve some of the funding challenges of their new business. Running any home business successfully has many challenges. Dave and Amanda are facing those challenges head on, always with positive expectations for the future. We like that. Their shop is smaller than desired but highly organized for continued production of a high quality product. Dave builds everything from SS heatports to glass work and of course his fine woodworking skills. I got to experience the UD over the last week with a clear distinction between the new log vape free flow air design compared to our traditional, more restricted airflow design.
Production was always a key factor for me as I was considering passing the Aromazap torch to someone else. We have had many folks express to us a desire to keep Aromazap going but none had any production experience, let alone making a log vape. Production is very important to me. If a business advertises a product and hypes that product, they had better be able to produce it. We do not do waiting lines in our business. We offer a product and ship it when it is ordered. Period. That issue has bugged me ever since joining FC. We are not building a custom Guitar here. This is a simple air heater in a block of wood. We do it. We get it out there. Then friends and family want another and another. That is how it works. I had to be sure Aromazap would be produced as required if it moved to someone else. Dave and Amanda can do it, no question about that. They will also produce it with attention to quality and safety as we have always tried to do.
So here is the plan at this stage. Dave will make a new heatport for Aromazap and refine the production process to fit Dave. We are starting slow and easy with no “demands” from any side. We all want to make this work so we are doing it the Turtle way to give it the best chance of success. I still have a supply of heatports so I will be making more of the traditional CRZs from the nicest wood I have left. There are not many left to go and they will be special as they will be the last Aromazaps made by Rick and Pat. In the meantime, I will also continue to make vapor stems and supply glass and other accessories and of course do any customer service required. In a month or two we should have more figured out.
Now I would like to let this news perc a little and let Dave say a bit about his dreams and goals. We are planning this in a way that AZ and UD will complement each other. The AZ and UD will be different beasts for different vaping experiences. They both still are basic log vapes based on the original Eterra design and heater.
We always knew we would have to pull back from Aromazap some day. We also knew we would love to see Aromazap continue well into the future if at all possible. We have built a good legacy over the last 11 years. This is our best shot at making that legacy continue. We are very thankful Dave bellied up to the bar to do his best to give Aromazap a second life even better than the first.
OK, the cat is out of the bag. Needless to say, Dave and I have agreed to post on each others thread as desired, assuming that is OK with the mods.
Also, the last couple of Zap orders are delayed til Thursday for shipping. The two old folks had to take a day off to get our wind back. Then that got foiled by Wilma deciding to jump out of her pasture. Luckily Barney stayed in so Wilma did not go far. Then there is the middle grandson who had emergency surgery on his knee Sunday night because the original stitch job Dr missed a nicked artery that leaked in the knee causing an internal staph infection. They caught it early enough so he will be fine but has a long recovery for a 9 year old kid.
Always something going on around here....................
StealthGrower, thank you for the nice review. We appreciate your contribution to our thread.
*sigh* Will come back later.
