There's a
presale going on for the VerdaVap, a
torch-driven ballvape for bongs, price is ~$115 USD. It's from Australia and his been developed by
@VerdaVap with lots of input from FCers and redditors. I wanted to share it here because it seems really awesome and looks like a fine example of torchable ballvapes, like the Eighteen Millimeter Killer and the Chaos. There's an 8mm stem adapter in the works, as well.
I was one of the people that
@VerdaVap gave a prototype to.
I know so few Australian made products in this space so it was great to get a chance to try this prototype.
The Prototype was the oven/bowl components to test how they worked.
One question people always ask is IH compatibility... It works in the wand - however it wasn't built to be used with induction heaters in mind, It takes the wand a couple of cycles to heat the device to a temperature that will produce vapor. This is built to be a butane vape / to be used with a torch. In fact VV actually stocks a torch head that he recommends and it does make the heating process quicker; but my blazer work perfectly well. A note though: A small single flame or even a small triple flame torch will struggle to get this to the required temperature.
The difference between the VerdaVap and a lot of the other butane vapes is the significant amount of Stainless Steel that makes up the body and the heater matrix. The steel body of the VV is 14mm wide and the walls of the chamber that holds the balls is about 2mm thick. This provides a buffer when heating the device as it takes a fair amount of calories to heat the device to temperature, but it also means that the device stays at temperature for a lot longer than your average device giving you more than enough time to clear the bowl or pass the glass to a friend.
The material of the body of the device is stainless steel 304 and while its not magnetic, the choice of material was purposefully made as it has a a way of giving you some sort of indication that you have heated it to the right spot as the flame changes color, making it quite obvious that its time to stop heating. I believe in the discord he has mentioned the intention to provide different options for material - both the metal with 314 and titanium but also with different Australian hard woods.
... and before I forget... the bowl size is about 0.2g loosely packed, I've squashed more in and managed to clear it all in a single heat cycle, but the bowl is a fixed size.
I'm keen to see how the release works and keen to support and Aussie dipping his toes into this space.