plenty of glass options you have there. I guess you use a Dremel for cutting?
Do you need to smooth off the cut edges?
Very much like the idea of custom made washers - or perhaps the entire heater cover like Ed uses.
There's a picture on his thread
here.
If it was for a 'for sale' unit that extra couple of quid/euros would have very little effect on the retail price.
Ed's heater cover is also just a tube, mechanically fastened (doesn't look welded) to that big, custom made washer, with his logo cut out for an air intake and holes for the screws. Looks impressive, sure, but that's mostly due to the Ti tube itself being a bit more complex, with the machined down step at the top for the Vapcap tip, the custom Ti screen and the engraved pattern along the tube.
So mine will be similar, but not exactly that fine looking
And the mechanical fastening, I'll do myself. And for the mentioned price, this is a no brainer anyway.
But... and big 'but' here: the thing with handcrafting a vape is, it's not exactly like ordering stuff from a gourmet menu! Take a DC jack for instance. When 90% of all potential customers, that purchase those jacks for a multitude of applications, mostly only ever need plated pot-metal rather than stainless steel, then plated pot-metal jacks is apart from a few lucky exceptions maybe, very probably all that the retail market will have to offer for you at that time. No one produces or stocks stuff, nobody buys! Same is true for steel tubing, washers and whatnot. For washers, you can have mostly zinc plated carbon steel, or stainless 304! If you want 316L or better, you'll have to have them custom made for you. And while this might be still affordable for something simple like a washer, try that with thin walled, telescopic ss tubing, or the DC jack, mentioned above.
If you can afford to order a whole production run or two... well, yes. Someone will gladly produce them for you then. But if you need maybe 20 pcs or so... just spare yourself the trouble and simply go with 304!
Once your show takes off and you've capital to invest, then you can also have nice things made for you, like a complete heater cover
, but for a one man show like mine here... better to keep me head out of the clouds and my feet on the ground
Glass cutting!
Yes! Using the Dremel tool with a diamond cutter disk for that. Still a bit experimenting there, how to do it best. Tried cutting all around and then all the way through with the disk at first, which works ok. But the cut gets more even, when doing it the classical way, by just cutting a groove all around with the disk and then simply break it in half. Takes maybe a minute all in all.
I then take my delta sander with 180 grit to go over the cut, then wash it up and finally heat up the edges of the cut to a slight glow with a 3-flame butane torch, to melt down the edges a bit. First glass pic above, the short piece to the right is still untreated.
Edit: Also, cuts above were all made hand held. Have to build me a small fixture for this, then the cut will be even more even
Love that Misty on the beach