i find when I don't have something to weight the herb down, it gets sucked into the stem and doesn't stay on the bottom of the bowl and doesn't work well to cook the herb. For me ! need something to weigh the herb down.
I guess my obvious questions would be, how fine of a grind do you use and also, how "much" is it been packed?
Of course everyone's mileage will vary but what I find is that once initially heated, the contents remain fairly stable.
Also, although it was previously unrelated, another "mod" I've made is to roll up a pipe screen around a large paperclip's wire and then trimmed off about 1/8th of the pipe screen before rolling it in to finish. I don't know the size of the screen exactly but I do know it is the smallest diameter commonly available.
Anyhoo, I then took the lower pipe stem and inserted the rolled pipe screen into the stem until it was partially exposed to the space where the stem flares out at its entrance.
I've had that there for the past two days and I've put 4 micro-loads through it during that time and the screen doesn't show any signs of having come in contact with any plant matter.
Of course there are a bazillion variables that could lead to the different results we are respectively seeing but I don't think it would take much to experimentally drill down to find out the actual cause(s) and in so doing, possibly come up with our having learned something new.
What good are toys if one can't experiment with them?
Are you game?
Hello, new user here, freshly ordered the Ascent, should receive it within days, and was wondering on the very first things to do for a virgin Ascent so it works properly in the future?
As mentioned, throw it on the charger. I got mine recently and I think it only needed to charge 30 minutes or so to reach a full charge.
Also, consensous suggests that it is a good idea to "burn in" the unit without any material in the oven as well.
I don't think seeing actual vapor is a common problem anymore but there still seems to be a "smell" about it when it is new and fired up for the first time. The smell has been described different ways and I won't even try to describe it but to say, you will know when it's gone.
The oven is a heating unit. It should get hot. About all one should smell is the smell of something hot.
I started with the oven rotated to is 180 position and ramped up the temp over about a 10 minute period checking for anything amiss or odd smells. Each step I'd wait until whatever I was smelling, in this case, had noticeably diminished. I ran it for about another 20 minutes at 430, turned it off to let it cool down and then ramped it up again to see if there were any remaining smells and then let it burn in for another 30 minutes or so for good measure.
As with most anecdotal based advice, your mileage may vary.
