High everyone! This is my first post here. I would like warn you that I'm so vaked that my words may wander randomly.
I have been self medicating with cannabis for about ten years. I had been combusting from pipes and bongs and fruit for a year when a room mate invested in a Volcano Classic. I was tied to it for years, scheduling my day around periodically being home to medicate with it. I would occasionally combust in joints when away from the Volcano, but it would be frustratingly unsatisfying, even when rolling up so much more that I would ever pack in a solid valve bowl.
Before the Volcano came my way, I had bought a soldering-iron-in-a-globe vaporizer on the Internet based on a vendors fallacious claims of efficacy. There was no way I could ever get medicated with that thing at all.
When I moved out to San Francisco I had bought a VaporBrothers non-hands-free whip vape from Tom the Nurse, based on his exaggerated claims of efficacy. I stuck with combusting from a locally blown 2ft beaker bong for a short while until my cannabis use came under my medical doctors sanction and supervision.
He insisted I not combust floral matter, ever, no matter how elaborate the water filtration. He suggested that if I were to medicate with floral matter, that I should use a high quality vape like a Volcano or Steinel. However, he suggested that I would be better served consuming concentrates. It was the first time I had learned about medicating with hot coals, heated titanium platens, and soldering irons. He suggested I should start with smoking ice-water hash in a thin but long glass pipe.
I found the perfect pipe at what then was the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, it was a L shaped pipe. imagine a glass tube a foot long and one-third of an inch in outer-diameter, bent 90-degrees two inches from one end. It was pinched just near the tip, forming the tiniest bowl, so small you never be able to medicated combusting bowlfulls of floral matter in it. I have been medicating with this pipe for the last 5 years, until a week ago, consuming over that period several hundred grams of ice-water hash, loose dry-sift, pressed kief, butane honey oil, and isopropyl quick-wash. In that time, I very rarely combusted, and when I did, it was only out of polite etiquette when a stranger passes me a bong or blunt or joint.
Smoking concentrates involves both vaporization and combustion. To the extent there is plant matter in the concentrate, there is combustion. The heat from the flame vaporizes the greasy stuff and at the end of the hit is the painful part where it burns to a ash. The more expensive the concentrate, the less plant matter, and the less the burn.
Two months ago dropped my pipe and it broke in two. I searched hard to find a replacement to no avail. I had smoked with it until a week ago having wrapped the cleanly broken joint with cellophane tape. I decided that was sad and i should let go and bury my sweetheart hash pipe and move on. I took a weeklong T-break and researched the Internet for a different way to medicate. I was deciding between the high-end Steinel to fill bags using floral matter and the Kut curve to vape oil. Searching for the ideal water-pipe to use with the Kut curve lead me to this forum featuring Stonemonkey55's awesome pictures of incredible glassware and videos of him milking them.
I started reading many threads on this website and read many pages of this thread. Damn there is a lot to read but I've been working backwards and have gotten 60 pages through. On Wednesday I ordered the kit sans charger from Blissville, it was shipped from San Diego on Thursday evening, and it arrived today (Saturday).
I picked up 1.7 grams of J-1 from Blue Sky Cafe for $22 and broke up perhaps 0.4grams and separated it into three piles. I'm starting my second trench now and am hitting it like a champ. I get better results in terms of continuous soft vapor by filling it less than full and constantly tapping it while i draw shaking the weed around.