This week in "Anonymouse Catches up on the EVO Thread":
Warning: First three rows may get SCIENCED. Yes, that is a thing.
Re: Concentrates in the VXNail, someone said:
This was the conclusion I came to as well doing my own independent "research" No noticeable increase in effect after taking in the last 10% or so that taste bad, even with AAA quality concentrate it must be the "leftovers"
To really rule out whether that last "10%" is "worthless", you should have a different person take each part of the hit, because someone that's just had 90% of the hit, and the strongest part at that, isn't really in a position to judge the relative strength of the tails of the hit. Better to remove that variable, and see what effect, if any, it has on a totally straight individual, rather than one that's already feeling a bunch of effects. If it genuinely turns out to be unnoticable, people can watch that last wisp of vapour burn off without feeling like they might be wasting goodness, which would be awesome, but if you
can feel it, I'm sure there's many users, especially those with supply difficulties (non-med states, most of the world, etc), that might not care about the taste so much. I also suspect that those tails, while not very "buzzy", might be relatively high in CBD and other late evapourators.
Here's my Hydrafoot 2.0 with the mini side cerc: that phlegmy looking residue is from concentrates. What is it? That can't be all that good to breathe in. I'm glad it condensed out.
Condensed vapor, resin, reclaim, whatever you'd like to call it. This happens whenever you vape or smoke just about anything.
It's
hydrated resin, which is what gives it, as macbill put it, that "phlegmy" look with the paler opacity at the edges and more golden translucency near the middle of the globs where it's less hydrated (the globs dry between sessions then re-wet from the edges in). Water molecules form hydrogen bonds (a weak, directional interaction between oppositely charged, locally polarised regions of molecules) with a lot of the organic molecules in the resin, forming an aggregate sludge that has slightly different physical properties to dry resin, hence the different appearance. It also increases its volume quite a bit, so if you empty the piece and let it dry you'll notice the globs shrink in thickness as they dry, and darken until they look like honey oil.
Does it condense like this in the lungs? My coughing fits make a bit more sense if this is happening in my lungs.
Nope, because your lungs aren't full of a large volume of water sloshing around, and also don't have any large, flat areas. They're fully of continually branching pathways until they eventually end in tiny, basically-microscopic, sacs (called alveoli).
The glob patterns you see in water pieces form because of the presence of the frothing water. If the glass was empty, they'd just haze up evenly. There is still even hazing occurring when water is added, but the water traps a lot of particles also, especially larger ones, and since resin is much happier to stick to itself than glass, when the particle-containing water is agitated and sloshed about in the glass, particles in that water that get pressed against the sticky haze on the sides of the can (or any other surface) adhere, which over time leads to resin building up in uneven, localised globs. This doesn't happen in your lungs, because of the division of paths and the lack of a volume of water sloshing about means the particles settle evenly on surfaces throughout the tissue. Technically it does form the phlegmy, hydrated form when it settles in your lungs, but it's an incredibly thin and even layer as opposed to the random thick globbies in the glass, and the resin has to be hydrated to be absorbed through the alveoli walls into the blood anyway.
You can reduce the globbing up of your water piece by adding a fibre filter (cotton, etc) between the vape and the glass. Allowing only the smaller particles through means the water can't throw the now absent bigger ones at the sticky walls and dramatically reduces the rate the pipe dirties up. Instead it'll "haze" up reasonably evenly and take about ten times as long to need cleaning. You'll also find it a lot less tussive; big comfort improvements if you have a sensitive throat or lungs. Plus, you can reclaim the "lost" resin particles by vaping the filter when it gets clogged, so there's no waste. Those filters are
strong, too, when fully-sodden.
well it looks like there is a bit of space in there to put the fiber at least one inch away from the elb, so just wondering if anyone tried it. i read somewhere on here that extra water filtration could still make you cough, because THC is an expectorant, but that with hemp fiber the hit is smoother and more like the sublimator. i think that makes sense because the fiber will catch reclaim that would otherwise condense in your lungs.
The "reclaim" is already condensed before it gets to the filter, let alone you lungs, otherwise it would still be a gas, and filters couldn't trap any of it. The fibre filters work by removing larger particles (soot or bigger condensed vapour particles) by mechanical action (trapping them by not allowing any pathways through the filter wide enough to let them pass).
Even if there isn't space in a water piece for cotton, though, it's always possible (and generally more convenient) to implement the filter as a separate unit, by taking a carbon filter or similar adapter, and filling it with loosely-packed cotton wool instead. Now you can use the same filter in
all your glass (which besides being convenient, also gets you to the sodden stage more quickly).
The sublimator extracts fully, but it separates the sublimate which is the high-temp part of the spectrum from the rest of the vapor. So I can see the comparison and rationale for smoothness, because the reclaim that gets trapped in the fiber is very much like the sublimate that the sublimator generates.
I'm not sure it is. Fibre filters traps larger vape particles, but they're just bigger chunks with the same composition as the smaller particles. When you revape that filter it doesn't feel any different to normal concentrate. Mind you, I doubt that the stuff that gets through the Sublimator is dramatically different to the stuff it traps, either. Are people finding that Sublimator "sublimate" produces noticeably different effects to whatever flowers or concentrate they initially put through the unit?
Its the same principal, fractional condensation. The higher temp particles seem to be harsher on the throat.
Mechanical filters only work on pre-condensed vapour (solid or semi-solid particles), which is a very different principle. I'm not convinced fractional condensation is actually occurring in the Sublimator either, though. I'd like to see some temps from inside the column in the unit. What I suspect is happening is similar to what occurs with a filter; mechanical removal of the larger particles (though by slightly different means). Resin becomes "stickier" the warmer it gets, and if there's any sort of turbulence in that column as the air is being sucked down, the majority of those larger particles are going to stick to the walls. Smaller particles move in a more fluid manner with the gas flow and are less likely to contact the walls, letting them reach all the way to your lungs. Smaller particles are more easily absorbed in the lungs and thus have less expectorant effect, which I imagine is largest influence on what causes the hits to feel "smoother".
We will be coming out with our own adapter kits as well. After playing around with a few different homemade versions, we have found the proper angles for the adapters to work as seamless as possible. We will have adapters for traditional 18 and 14.4 mm waterpipes and adapters for rigs that feature 10, 14, and 18 mm male joints.
If you made machined titanium adapters instead of glass ones for the water piece end, you could have stepped adapters that universally fit 10/14/18mm male joints or 14/18 female joints, and sell just two models instead of five. You could even get real fancy with a reversible threaded bit that let the one adapter be reconfigured into male or female mode and fit all five joints with one product. This'd be really convenient because you'd only need one hose total to connect the EVO to
any of your glass, as opposed to buying a full hose setup for each configuration you own. If you had all five joint types you'd not just need five adapters but also five hoses and five 18mm female adapters for the EVO too.
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