Has anyone tried TRWW's "XXL" tapered dimpled stem?
It's pretty tempting, though it's more expensive and looks massive next to the regular one.... I guess it cools way more?
Yeah longer will always cool more, and catch more herb particles...
Also, is there any reason to get the official Tinymight WPA instead of the TRRW one?
If I get the TRRW one I could combine the purchases and pay just once for shipping...
If it's just a plain 18, they're all the same, that's why many of us just use the RBT Splinter stems backwards, they have become my default dedicated TM WPAs since I would never use them as plain RBT stems again now lol the difference could be the inner diameter and glass thickness, so depending how you get rimless basket screen and such, but yeah that's it really
TRRW also has a dimpled stem that doubles as a WPA, but you give up some dimples and putting the WPA end on your mouth might not be as nice as the tapered stems...
One thing that is nice about those ones, though I think they are 14 mm? is at the WPA end seems to be non frosted which would be more comfortable as a mouthpiece than a typical frosted ground glass one (and less risk of glass dust etc)
Oh, and I was *this* close to buying a super sexy GVB baller stem (which I've heard cools better than any of the other straight stems), but then went into a paranoid rabbit hole of researching whether the boro balls could rub against each other and release glass dust / shards, silicosis, the difference between crystalline (bad) and amorphous silica (harmless), the fact that even glass (amorphous silica) can have some crystalline silica impurities, etc. And then decided it would be best for my peace of mind to not get one and stop wondering if the silly little balls would slowly kills me after all...
Yeah so like I was saying above, ground on ground glass, like most joint connections, many people fear creates the glass dust as well... I am not concerned about the large balls in this configuration, because of how smooth they are being high quality glass at least the handmade color ones for sure, but the clear ones also are fully smooth, so I haven't really thought about it with the size being so large as well... As you use them, they also don't move into each other much, the oils help stick them a bit, they don't clack in a way that I would think could cause dust, given their quality and the force, they are typically pretty close together so they don't rattle much at all either, and that could be specifically requested, the type of configuration where they wouldn't be moving much if at all...?
Finally GVB makes really nice all spiked stems alternatively if you want to reach out by message, I'm sure they will be posted available on the site at some point too, so that could be another option if you really do fear the balls too much!