Care to share: Temperature? # on TM dial?
Often, I am starting literally as low as possible, turn it on and then put the dial all the way down, I will turn the dial up after each hit, tiny bit by tiny bit, finishing below 6... Sometimes I might start at 2 or even closer to three, with larger steps up for fewer hits, depending what I'm going for at the time. The specific temperature settings are all relative, and kind of irrelevant really? Consistent and accurate with the dial however!
I haven't used stock stem with cooling unit since I got my first one back in December 2019 and quarantined in March 2020 so this is all with backwards RBT stems as WPA in hooks or other dry ass pieces (sometimes I will finish through water, or start higher, for fewer hits through water, typically just one at 5 or 6 in fact)
There were people who were looking for RBT stems to use with water pieces. I remember the name of Mountainglass.com from "back in the day" when we did not want to pay what RBT was charging for a Zion/Milanna stem.
I don't remember what we searched for to find the colored class. The clear was not thick enough to hold a stem (more than a few years ago) but I seem to remember the Blue, green, and orange stems were thick enough.
This is where many of us bought stems but they will probably need to be shortened.
This is a pretty good starting point:
https://www.mountainglass.com/boro-glass-33-coe/ground-joints-etc/ground-joints?page=4
I don't know what you mean by the "clear was not thick enough to hold a stem"...?
But be advised, Even though these are supposed to all be 16 mm outer diameter, there is variation, many of the mountain glass stems will not fit... I have several, I have one black glass that was able to fit, others that were not, I think it is a bit safer to stick with the RBT China stock of stems for the Splinter if they can be found... You can try mountain glass of course, but since the stems have to be cut down, and there's no guarantee they will even fit, I don't know if it's worthwhile, though they are priced very reasonably!
Rather than make edibles with the AVB, I make tincture using Everclear. Edibles are a pain to make, and I find them to be not as predictable/consistent as the tincture (i.e. when will the edible kick in? for how long?)
I've never tried that, I don't drink alcohol, so I don't know if that's something I would want to do? I only have iso alcohol, I did get a MCT oil tincture from a CBD place a while ago but it never felt like it really did anything?
I only see one "study" referenced all the time, and I disregard it for 3 reasons:
1) I forget exactly how old it is, but isn't it at least a couple of decades?
2) Testing tech has almost certainly improved since that study was done.
3) The study was about smoking, not vaping (why assume results would be identical?)
Yeah there are not really studies for this with vaping, and I do think it can be helpful to hold in a bit more than smoking to absorb actives, however the key is a deep inhale. So the best thing to do, is to take an inhale of the head, and then follow it up with an inhale of fresh air, hold that for a few seconds and release, the extra fresh air helps to absorb even more vapor, but you don't want to just hold your breath for several seconds as that is not productive and could just lead to lightheadedness lol