One thing to remember is that not everybody lives in the US and the delivery fees can be very high. With USPS if my package get screened at the border I'm gonna have to pay taxes and duty, you can add handling fees with the private carriers. This means if I have to pay a percentage of the value of my package it's better to be 160$ than 280$.
The stand is anything but janky. It does the job of holding the vape and at close to 1200g this is the heaviest and most stable stand I have. Even if I bump the stand only the goose neck will move. The only thing I wish this had better protection from the heat but you can burn yourself on a lot of other stands regardless of the design. The vape is 120$ at regular price so the stand is an extra 40$ in the bundle. How much do the stand for the Flowerpot or the Herborizer cost again? You can burn yourself on these too.
I played around last night and got some good results.
The hot spot and the C-clip was on my mind,
@D3m0nFlare got me thinking about the possibility of the gap in the clip letting more heat passing thru so I wanted to find something to fill it. The answer was in the box, I used both clips.
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There's enough space to put both clips and it only took me a couple of minutes. It works, but not perfectly. I still have a hot spot but now it's more spread and even on one side of the bowl. This means I don't have to rotate as much as I used to to have an even roast. I think one of my problems is the beads moving inside the vape and this cause the hot spot to not be consistent, so I plan to change the beads for some 3mm boro I have and pack them tight so nothing moves anymore.
But I spent last evening with the two C-clips on the vape and did some testing. What worked really well was my idea about using the DDave mod. I used the bucket screen and I used the DDave adapter to bring the heat a lot closer to the herb, the vape was at the first setting and this is the result after two puff:
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Very good for a first try. After that I raised the heat to level 2 and 3 but I never got an even roast like with the first setting. The heat has more time to vaporize everything before it starts to burn too much and it also heat up the basket to get a more complete extraction.
I also changed my technique with the way I rotate to get my even roast. It's not to vape I rotate but the bowl and it's so much easier, no more fight with the cord. The metal clips I use to hold the glass are loose enough that I can lift the adapter a little bit and do a quarter turn without too much trouble, I just lift the vape a tiny bit a the top and do my quarter turn to cook everything evenly. I can touch the ridge on middle of the male adapter, it stay cool enough to hold when you are not inhaling hot air thru it, so that's the part I turn. The only problem is some times the glass will get stuck so before I start I just move the glass on the joint to make sure everything is free to move.
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More testing to do tonight but I'm close to have what I want to have out of this vape.