Rainy Sunday morning here in Switzerland, the perfect time for the post about the test with the stainless steel washer.
This is how the middle section looks after 80 bowls of flowers and 40 bowls of hash, meaning that totally 120 bowls have been vaporized. I heated the bowl 8 times on average per session leading to a total of around 960 heating cycles. Of course, I heated exclusively with the torch lighter only, heating with the station does not cause any burning on the middle section. It also became clear to me, that the middle section gets burned and stained from the great heat of the hot air passing by on the side, the heat from underneath is not an issue but the edge of the filter gets extremely hot from the torch. At first sight, there is not much difference as the side also gets stained from the heat. Here it is:
After taking off the filter we can see where the honey is. It looks dirty but considering that this is after 120 bowls of heavy use, there are not that much residues and it can be reclaimed, very oily and smelling real good. Because the middle section is standing on the SS washer and not in the "mud", the middle section still looks quite clean.
The core of the test is how the middle section looks regarding the burning. As we can clearly see, the middle section got stained on the outside about the same as without the washer but the flat part still looks intact and not burned at all, even the edge is still sharp!
Because the flat part of the wood is much larger with the washer and gets less hot at the same time, I am sure the middle section will stay flat and last for much longer with the washer !
Here is a picture of the mid-section after I cleaned it a bit. Even when the burning should go a bit further to the inside after a while, it will never go all the way to the inside of the flat part, meaning that the wood will not erode and the spring action of the locking system will always stay tight.
Clean and ready to go for the next thousand bowls!
I should have thought of this washer before! I always thought the heat comes from underneath but this is not true, the issue is the hot air heating the filter on the edge more than the pan due to bad conduction of the stainless steel filter.
After 11 years of the making, I finally found the last missing link of vapman, this is kind of magic.
The washers are ordered and they will be standard on every vapman. Good thing, every vapman can be equipped with the washer at any time.
I wish you all a wonderful Sunday!
vapman