"This is Major Tom to Ground Control (...) I'm floating in a most peculiar way"
I received the Project and can already tell I'm much satisfyed. Excellent my good man
@Pipes! It bloody works, to say the least!
It's close to be very good, spare three points we should try to improve in the future. I finished my second test bowl, initial report follows. This is not a review, and as it is a community project or at least meant to be, it would feel a bit out of place. I mean it's not presented as a commercial product, even if in practice it is @Pipe's creation and to date he is the only maker. So for some reason it would feel awkward to me to review it like your average chinese mass produced vape.
Furthermore it's way too soon to make any definitive judgment, and I need to improve my technique. But right now, with the Project still warm sitting next to me on the desk, there are already a lot of things to say!
1) Shipping was fast (Europe), packaging a bit light but it wasn't crushed. Maybe you could consider adding an extra folded piece of cardboard but no big deal if you don't.
2) Fit and finish very nice, lean, efficient. I wish the stem would have a slightly tighter fit in the o-rings, as it wobbles a bit (at first I thought there was a minute air leak here but apprently not) Again no big deal especially when users will use their other stem(s) of choice.
3) The linseed oil smell is really strong and clearly overwhelmed the taste of my first couple of sessions. This is the first of my 3 negative points. But I know it should fade away and it's absolutely not comparable to smelling silicone and/or plastics (aka robot fart aka new car smell) like in nearly all vapes from PRC. It's natural but disturbing, and I understand why
@PPN said it smelled like paint. I don't know how to improve that part, but did you consider making raw/untreated wooden parts? If someone could make compatible rare wood bodies that would be great!
4) Initial coil reading at 0.5 ohm, locked in. I'm using an evic VTC Mini with 3.03 firmware. I bought it from fasttech but took care of selecting the version with "authentic" in the product name. Came with a genuine security code that worked on joyetech website. Setting was easy.
5) TCR set to 145, first session started at 250°C/480°F. Loaded with 0.06g approx, a tad more than half my usual load size. Sucked in the stem, then tamped with the FM5 tool to make a nice flat puck covering the screen fully. Hit the trigger, got first hit in 2 seconds, the thing is fast and works. Taste covered by linseed but nice small hit (I was so afraid of combusting during this run that I was overly cautious)
6) Tried to rotate the stem after each hit but got a very focused hot spot nonetheless, starting to spoil the taste. Got quite good hits then decided to stir, made a mess... Raised temp to 275°C/530°F but bowl screen wasn't fully covered anymore (due to the spilling...) and it was wispy. ABV was light brown and more uniform than expected anyways.
7) Second session, loaded with 0.1g approx, tamped good, almost filling the stem. This time I started at 230°C/445°F and spent most of the session there, nailing down the technique and modulating the preheating/drawing/clearing times (at the end it was 1sec preheat, 4 to 5 seconds drawing with trigger on, then 3 to 5 seconds drawing with trigger off to clear, similar to how I use the Zion but with less preheat as this one has way less inertia, it's a tiny coil!) Hot spot was more manageable but still there. I stirred twice then retamped during the session then ended at 250°C/480°F. ABV looked properly extracted but session was shorter than a Zion session with the same load.
I'm positively impressed so far. So the two problems we should try to improve are the hotspot(s) and the teflon component. For the latter it's simple, we just need to crowdsource the search of a replacement part. I know most of you guys are fine with it but I'd rather have some less controversial material in there, even if it's prolly safe. Let's say, just for the peace of mind.
For the hotspot I'm sure load position, packing and other parameters enter into play, but we're down to the initial talks about turbulences, vortexes and what not, as well as coil geometry changes. I'm sure we'll find something.
Now for those who wondered: no, it's not comparable to the Zion, but it's not meant to be. Zion heater tech has a drawback: it takes a lot of space. This one is tiny and portable. I don't have a Milaana for now but I have the intuition that the Project has some pros and cons that balance well with the Milaana ones. As usual my advice would be: buy them both!
PS: it's a bit weird at first that the box enters protection mode so fast then only pulses about 4A for very short bursts. In the Zi/Mi it's full-on 40-60W continuous. But in the end it works so it could mean that this is way more efficient battery-wise.
PS2: I was testing a Samsung 25R cell that I have some doubts about (could be a fake or a B-grade as it came from BangGood and was a bit too cheap) so as a safety measure I set the Watts limiter to 40W on the evic.
..... 
) and it's working great dry as well. I dropped my TCR to 127 and 487F and it seems a little gentler maybe? Or maybe just because I'm using half-packed stems and the hotspot isn't as intense now but it was a recent change and more testing is needed. 
sorry if it doesn't make sense!
