As far as adjusting my draw speed/pressure I have found if I pull until the moment I feel resistance then I ease up a little bit and then let that remaining 'soft' resistance gently pull the vapor through the device. This way your are never pulling your draw beyond the resistance the Firefly was designed for. This technique also eliminates slow draw problems.
This tip is GENIUS. Tried it last night. It's subtle, takes some nuance and some practice, but once you can clearly "feel" where the natural resistance starts, you can pull right UP TO that point and it regulates the draw perfectly...this allows you to hit faster, hold the button longer, get bigger, deeper hits *without* charring...just the perfect way to describe it. Of course it takes a little repetition and some intuitive feel for the device, but this is a great tip.
Nice description Steama. Once again I learn a new twist on a device I've been using for a month. Says much about the FF that its simple design allows for a lot of user variation, yielding all kinds of results.
Everyone that owns a Firefly should try comparing vapor production and results from a 'whole bud' to ground bud and decide for themselves. Experimentation can be enlightening. I know what I will be putting in my Firefly and it ain't whole bud.
I totally agree that this is a user-experimentation thing. I've used all kinds of grind in the FF, from whole small nugs to much finer. They all yield, again, different results. Which is best or taste bests or whatever is completely subjective. For me, one thing is constant...if I'm going to *use* up the material, it eventually has to get ground up. Either before the bowl starts, or during, but if the material doesn't end up much much finer, then obviously you haven't gotten all of the goodies out of it. I've read some folks like to "finish" it in another vape, and as I said like a zillion pages back, I find I can't get those last few hits in the FF and use my V Tower to really finish the material. But no matter how big the pieces are when I start a bowl in the FF, they are surely much closer to "ground" when I'm done.
I can't speak to the firefly, but my use of the vapolution 2 has led me to think that unground bud is more efficient due to it not having lost everything that is in the kief left behind in my grinder. the herbalaire was always touted as being very efficient and tasty and it didn't require grinding either.
For me personally, this more of an indictment of using a grinder than "grinding" in general. As I've said, I hate all the stuff that gets lost in the grinder. You can still use ground material in a vape and not be subject to the exigencies of a grinder. Another reason why God gave us fingers.
I can tell you that the last four or five vapes I have tried have got me thinking we don't know shit about vaporization yet as a whole. There are so many variables that haven't been scientifically explored that we are left to describing subjectively. I think we all need to open our minds again to new possibilities and variables in the vaporization process.
That's the real takeway for me. The more I learn, the less I know, somehow. Four or five years and 8+ devices and every week or so I try something different, and what I think I know about vaping technique shifts on me. Half the fun of this whole thing is how variable everything is. Any jerk can hold a flame to a pipe. Vaping...now *that's* art...