Yes
% The worst offender is the direct draw glass stem, then the 19mm GonG, both of which are also helped a lot by restricting air flow (slow draw manually or with balls or hemp fiber for stem, water for wpa) and moving the dog and stem so the ends are on an angle to each other. The direct draw stems are better but still require a stir. I've tried dropping my voltage but then I drain the heat of the core nearly immediately so I prefer a "higher" resting temp with some handwork.
With that said, nearly all my convection vapes hot spot somewhat and at the higher temps they're all offenders. My Alpha has a slightly offset hotspot center which is a little pronounced but the end AVB is nothing bad by any means.
@arb
How small of a load are you using to get results like this? Pictures would be greatly appreciated. Anything more than a microdose sized load for me and consistency is completely out the window unless I'm packing the load further away which means a more extended session. I was planning on capping my next stem with another screen to disrupt the air flow which should help even things out.
Yeah, about an inch and a half long piece of 1/2" heat resistant food safe silicone tubing will solve that issue
%.
Seriously.
So I started this early this morning and then spent most of the day rather less functional than had been my intent. Yup. Two full Alpha loads and I'm a goner for 16 hours LOL!
I tried to get good pictures to illustrate some of this stuff but it was a (very - very very veryveryvery) rare overcast day here in the desert - all day, as it turned out, and the lack of any natural light whatsoever plus my increasing loss of function as the experiment progressed led to color balance problems that make it really hard to see things. I managed a few and here they are:
This is the flour-shake I have to deal with - hopefully this will give you some idea of just how finely ground this stuff is and why I whine about fine screens all the time LOL!:
That is a small bud to the left, and that scattering of dust to the right is one large one-hitter load of the pre-ground shake I've been calling "flour-shake". I actually normally use a bit less than that per load, that's the max I can fully hit in one in-breath. It fills the 3/8" tip of the one-hitter stem to within about 1/16th inch of the tip of the stem, but draws down to about half that height. Stuff's fluffy, I'll say that for it.
This is an Alpha glass direct draw stem, well stippled with lurvely resin. The basket screen is mounted flat side up and there is a fine 1/2" screen on top of that so I can use my flour-shake.
The screen is mounted quite high in the stem (1/2" from the end) because I use this with a silicone airlock which extends the length of the tip by however much overhang you give it.
Mine usually ends up at about 1/2" to 5/8", so ultimately the effective position of the screen is about an inch to 1 1/8" from the end of the silicone airlock. In the picture it's at 5/8" length above the rim of the alpha stem. I load the stem, put the air lock on, do the draw, stir, draw again, remove the airlock and dump the abv (and the flat screen) in a tiny bowl so I can retrieve the screen and brush it off. With the glass one-hitter I do my draws in one long slow in-breath that I speed up toward the end. With the alpha, I end up doing 3 to 4 shorter in-breaths per draw - the material is just so much more I find this to be more effective. Technically maybe that's not one draw, I don't know. I'm defining a draw as starting when you apply the stem to the heater core and its over when you remove the stem from the heater core, regardless of how many inbreaths you take.
Putting 1/2" ID silicone tubing on 3/4" OD glass tubing is REALLY HARD when the silicone tubing is new, but it has a sort of a break-in period and then its a lot easier. I'm lacking any significant dexterity and strength in my hands is not what it once was, but I can slip these pieces on and off pretty handily once they're broken in - and that really doesn't take very long to happen.
I just couldn't get a good picture of a hotspot, partly because of poor lighting and a crappy cell phone camera, but also because I have to create the hotspot to start with - and doing that with an Alpha stem load and not getting it right camera-wise twice in a row was more than enough to incapacitate me for the rest of the day LOL!
But I did manage a good picture of the even roasting I get from the use of the silicone airlock. This is even roasting in the Alpha glass direct draw stem WITH the silicone airlock:
I couldn't get a good picture of a hotspot, but imagine that dark area there about half that size and off-center. That's hotspotting. I also couldn't get a good picture of the ABV, it was darker outside by then and the indoor lighting is pretty crappy, but I've posted pics of typical ABV out of my stems before. It's still the same. When I dumped the above, it was evenly vaped. It LOOKS like there is a very thin unvaped ring above, but its really not unvaped, its just not as dark as the rest. Poor lighting is largely at fault, it is lighter but not that much lighter. Seems to be a light scattering effect of the glass tubing also.
I used my glass one-hitter as a scoop to fill the alpha - with that flat screen in there, trying to scoop with the Alpha stem can dislodge the screen so you get stuff under it or it falls out into the shake altogether. I ended up with about 4x my normal one-hitter load size in the Alpha stem, just short of the lip of the stem (remember its fluffy, it'll draw down to 1/2 or 1/3rd that height)
Hopefully someone else will post a picture of a hotspot, I just haven't got the capacity when it comes to the Alpha stem, when I need multiple takes LOL! I'll try again when there's more natural light available, when I've recovered a bit.
Wish I could have got a good pic of a hotspot but I'm not up to trying again for the nonce LOL!
love what you did with the VV housing.
