My Vapocane arrived today. It's an original and it was made in Austria according to the box. It looks nice, good quality glass & joints as far as I can judge as a glass-noob. Perhaps we should both post a picture to compare the regular & the B-version @ CDS?
It's taller then I thought & the glass is thicker then I expected. Luckily, because hopefully it will not break as easy as I feared now *knocks on wood*
I played around with it for a while to get familiar with it. Inserted a brass screen just to try it out which was doable, then a SS screen which was a bitch to get in place. The SS screens I have are a little smaller than the brass screens that come with it plus it doesn't bend as easily so it was really hard to get it where I want. Not sure how deep it's suppose to be in, I made mine to fit about half a centimeter below the point the cane insert will go in the GG bowl for a small bowl size to start with. I have to say this is a shitty & lazy design imo. For how it's priced it should have had a nice flat bowl with some pinches to hold the screen like the GVB bowl. If this is a keeper I'll definitely look in to having someone make me a custom bowl for it. After I was done playing I took the screen out to give it the torch treatment & then I soaked everything in my bong cleaning solution with hot water. I guess it's off to the coffeeshop now to make sure I don't run out of weed during my test session & then hit, I'll be back
Part two:
K, got me some really nice Diesel Haze, a little White Widow, and my regular fav miss Angel Dust, lets get steaming
I started with the Diesel, the only one of the three I've never had before. The first two hits were tasty, but practically without visible vapor. I got it going on the third one though, wow! The glass wasn't even red hot yet, but I got clouds so thick I feared for combustion. The 0,1 gram I loaded is starting to turn from green to a light gold/brown without any darker spots, so I guess I could have pushed it a little further if I wanted to, nice to know.
Did anyone ever combust with this thing just using the heat-the-glass-method?
K, I need way more practice so i"m gonna finish this bowl now & start another one, later guyz
edit: Urm, I guess I'm not going anywhere
I'm really loving this so far. I have to factor in the facts that I haven't eaten a lot today & that this is a new strain to me, but I haven't been this high in weeks. Let alone of just 0,1gram. I got about 10 medium to large sized bong hits out of that 0,1 gram and it isn't even that dark yet. I'll probably get another 5 or 6 good hits from it with my Solo at this point. But I want to see how far I can take it with the Cane, if it can get it as dark as my ceramic Solo without coming to close to combustion I have a new daily driver here.
Some random first observations:
-Based on above mentioned experience the Vapocane seems extremely effective. At this point I'm at 12 medium sized dense hits & my AVB is now partly medium dark brown with lighter bits so I estimate I'm at about 2/3 of the bowl of where I usually like to take my weed. I did only try a bowl with top quality bud though, next one will have to be with a slightly lesser quality to see how long that lasts.
-Heating the glass for less then 10 seconds before you start drawing is enough to produce huge dense clouds if you place your screen so the top of the layer of your green is directly underneath the top/heater part of the Vapocane. Heating the entire outer service of the heater evenly with a large flame seems to work best.
-You basically get instant vapor with the other method with the flame pointed towards opening of the heater. Be careful with your flame distance, I lightly scorched my bowl almost instantly first time I tried.
-It looks really sweet with my 250ml Ehle with sandblasted logo
Last edit for now: I finally finished my first bowl after it was feeding time. I'm at 16 really good hits of 0,1 gram right now and my AVB is at a dark brown color but not quit black yet. I could stil get a few more visible vapor hits from it but it does take a little longer to heat it at this point & I'm getting impatience with all this weed to try out so I'm dumping it and proceeding
Conclusion so far:
Right now I choose this over the Vapo Bowl for it's cleaner, almost entirely glass air-path (except for the screen, which I like to eliminate at some point with a custom blown bowl with build in glass screen) when using it with induction-convection method. It's easier this way to maintain a constant temperature & my throat feels less hot than after a Vabo Bowl bowl. It's slightly harder to use and will require a little more technique with the torch then the Vapo Bowl or Vapostar, and one should really think about how to handle this vape beforehand to prevent burning yourself because the glass will get extremely hot, even though it cools down relatively fast as well. I already know I'm gonna burn myself at least once on it. Just like I always cut myself when using a new knife, or spill red wine over it when I wear a new shirt. I hope it'll be just once though, I still wear a mark from my glass Vapo Bowl (on my belly for crying out load). I don't like using the rubber gripper that came with the Cane by the way, I prefer to just let it sit & cool down for half a minute or so and then just gently pick it up by the base of the heater with two fingers. Don't insert it to tight & it'll come out easily, it doesn't need a tight twist for a good seal anyways. Talking about the seal of the GG, with my glass Vapo Bowl I often wished I had a tube with a carb hole because the GG fit is really poor on that one. It's not even at the right angle on mine, it only makes contact with the downstem of my tube at the bottom of the GG connection so you have to kinda jam it in there otherwise it wobbles. This made it so unpleasant to clear the tube by pulling out the slide that usually just took of the metal cap & clear the tube through the bowl because of that. It's nice to have a proper one now.
The case in shape of a marker is ridiculous in my opinion, it only fits half the vape, where do we put the bowl part? They should have provided another slightly larger one for the bowl as well. The Vapocane also came with a cleaning brush, some brass screens and a torch lighter. I threw away the screens & the brush is to large to fit in the heater part but I guess that won't need much cleaning anyway as long as you don't use a regular flame lighter, it's fine for the bowl part. The torch works ok right now although it doesn't seem to be of a too good quality. I didn't plan on using it anyway, I recommend using a either a soldering torch or a crme brle burner with the Vapocane, I use a Iroda PT-220 which I highly recommend because of it's easy one hand operation, which adds a lot towards safety in my experience.