I wanna start a vape review page and for now it’s gonna reside right here at writemore.morewrite.org dgmw, this isn't it YET...this is the preamble. Or in my case, the pre-ramble...
Probably makes more sense to do it as a text based blog type thing, maybe with graphics. I’m not really social enough to bother with youtubing myself despite persistent middling-to-serious interest in video processing and editing. Preservation and archiving. (But enough about the man behind the curtain...)
I know how much I like to watch various other people do vape videos where there’s actual tangible INFORMATION within them, not just another drunk-a-like stupid-stoner blowing hit after vapid hit in your face and cackling like a NASCAR fan, hooting like a hairy cheerleader while banging their hands on the table. Nobody needs to see that. Only thing interesting about that stooge is that he uses gatorade for bongwater, what with his white-trash tapout snapback and a mullet. smh
I just don’t care enough to get comfortable with putting my face in a video. So I won’t go that a-way. But I will take a breath to thank youtubers like Bubbleman's World and his Hash Church series. A decent amount of information to the entertainment ratio in his content. Dude knows his shizz.
Come to think of it, I ought to thank The Vape Critic on youtube. He's also running a high quality AV production with a high information-to-entertainment ratio. Pretty concise and clear with a wide variety of higher-end devices given rigorous inspection and thoughtful comparison. It becomes clear quickly that he knows what he's talking about and he isn't taking free stuff to write puff pieces about. He will be honest and tell you when something is not what it claims or not what it ought to be. Don't miss it...
Come to think of it, I ought to thank The Vape Critic on youtube. He's also running a high quality AV production with a high information-to-entertainment ratio. Pretty concise and clear with a wide variety of higher-end devices given rigorous inspection and thoughtful comparison. It becomes clear quickly that he knows what he's talking about and he isn't taking free stuff to write puff pieces about. He will be honest and tell you when something is not what it claims or not what it ought to be. Don't miss it...
I know some things myself about this stuff, have for a minute now, and I think it's a shame it only lives inside my head. I ask a fair amount of questions at the dispenaries I visit. I ought to let those answers (along with the ones I'm smart enough to look up and verify or figure out for myself) be useful to a larger audience. Maybe even somebody who can take it and improve upon it. Mental damage and social phobias aside, this is useful information, dammit. I won't let my defects keep it proprietary...from this point forward I refuse.
Taking my cue from thoughtful, studious st0ners like VapeCritic and bubbleman, I'll try to show-and-prove without too much shuck-and-jive.
I should make it clear this is a Californian’s perspective on 2017 and the previous few years vaping whenever smoke of sufficient quality that it didn't make me cough wasn’t available - but oil was. Things have come a long way since 2012 and even local and regional laws have evolved in unexpected ways. Having other states where products can originate is a relatively recent development. I’m very thankful that the allegedly free market has given us greater access to a wider variety of products and resources in the concentrated cannabis medicine market.
And I’ve never understood the fear and loathing approach of some fanatical drug war types who claim access of anyone, even registered patients to concentrated medicine is somehow a danger to all citizens. It’s nothing more than Extra Strength Tylenol in a slightly different dimension when considered with the slightest amount of logic and reason. Higher concentrated medicine means I can rely on a consistent dose and not have to spend all day using inferior methods to solve the health issues for which I escaped big-pharm-ylvania in the first damn place.
The ultimate goal of my use of medical marijuana products is a healthier, more active lifestyle. I’ve sustained various injuries and have conditions inherent to my genetic lineage which are greatly alleviated, if not remedied entirely, by the products I’m discussing here. If you’re looking for a strictly recreational review, this probably isn’t gonna help you much. I can’t and won’t be telling you which one gets you most "fcuked up" or which one passes for using at the casino betting tables like some kind of overgrown fratboy blowing vape in errybody’s face. Nope.
I use enough, and just/only enough of whatever I’ve written about here to get back to whatever my life needs me to be doing. Whether that be writing this post, digging into classical chiptune remixes on youtube, doing the dishes, the catboxes, 8-hour marathon sessions of Zelda, or whatever one does to get through their days. I don’t sit around like the stereotypical stoner invented by the opposition to scare otherwise rational people into acting against their own self-interest by keeping the dinosaur of the drug war going to this day. A concept that was out of date in the 1980s...still won’t be allowed to die by a hard-right squad of mostly white whackos when the rest of us are out here getting on with our lives, they’re stuck in 1968 flogging everybody but themselves. smh
Personal baggage aside (as if?!?), I should be able to give a brief review of 15-20 or more different brands of vape cartridge at this point. Just by shopping around and doing my homework. I’ve only seen a few youtubers doing vape reviews and they’re not focusing on popular products. I wanna see which ones are plastic vs glass, single vs dual coil, half vs full gram, additive-laden vs pure CO2 oil, and whether or not they’re single-use landfill-destined or if they can be re-used/re-filled.
I know people say you shouldn’t re-use vape cartridges and they have many legitimate points. If your cart’s coil goes before you use the second filling, how you gonna get your premium-priced unvaped oil back out? Even in the purest oil aren’t there still random particulates that eventually clog up any coil, isn’t it wise to change them? Without going into a whole mini tutorial on using oil and cartridges everyday, I can agree to a point. It’s not good to use a cartridge for more than a gram or two of oil. They should be changed, rotated, whatever keeps them from getting old and clogged up.
But I do believe it’s possible to re-use half and whole gram vaporizer cartridges, whether you buy standard nicotine vaporizer parts to fill with Cannabis extracts or you prize high quality hand-made coils and variable voltage batteries for your own oil. Many of the glass cartridges sold and almost all of the plastic ones are able to be easily opened and refilled if necessary. I wouldn’t ever use a cart for more than 2 grams before replacing it, but that’s really just common sense.
I possess plenty of deep-seated hippie recycling spirit, just paired with the knowledge that you can’t practically depend on any of these mass-produced vape tanks for more than three full tank cycles even with just nicotine juice, as far as anything I’ve read.
The rabbit hole is many, deep and varied on what type of tank, coil, and battery you wish to use to vape. You could lose a whole afternoon several days in a row just watching very opinionated, however often silly, vape users describing and demonstrating their techniques. On pocket/portable vapes, desktop vapes, nails, nector collectors, volcano vapes with ten foot collector bags, stone nails with massive reclaim rigs and honeycomb percs...the variations are literally endless.
No matter how elaborate the setups can get, I prefer the portable ones because I can take them anywhere. The Pax Era wins the form-factor olympics at this point, for being stealthy enough that you can usually palm it and hit it right in front of security at a concert and they just think you’re pensively holding your chin for a second or two. I love the stealth factor of the Pax Era.
I do like a variable voltage battery, but it’s nowhere near as necessary to my methods as I thought it might be before I actually used one. It’s nice to have a few options, but the entire spectrum hasn’t been ultimately necessary for me. I love my Cool Fire IV Plus battery because it’s blue and it fits nicely in the hand, and it holds a massive charge that can get me through even the heaviest of vape days. It also charges fast and allows you to continue to use it while it’s plugged in and charging. My previous battery, a Lucid that looked purple in the display case but seems pink in the hard light of day, while also variable voltage/wattage didn’t allow pass-through functionality, IIRC it needed downtime to charge.
I’ve had plenty of luck with glass and metal vape tanks, something like the Gladius with replaceable coils. Those you can run three or more grams through on a single coil, but you can fill them to 1.5 grams as well. Most of the typical 510-threaded standard width tanks max out at a full gram, or to maintain the same width they’d need to be longer than a crayon, wider than your hand. The Gladius is more the thickness of your thumb in the tank but with a narrower, still thick metal mouthpiece.
I could even veer into a tangent about how I hate hate hate getting a syringe full of oil only to get it open and find it has an unthreaded tip and can’t have a proper narrow tip screwed onto it in order to fill a tank with a narrow opening (find one that doesn’t aside from the phat tanks like a Gladius or a Kanger) because shitty syringes might be able to squirt out a blob of oil into your mouth, your bowl, or onto a hot nail - but they’re not ready for prime time, can’t be used for more than a few specific tasks, and they ultimately suck ass. Don’t use unthreaded syringes people, no matter how much less they cost. Think of the end user who just wants to fill their tank with no muss/fuss and get on with their lives, please!
Before I sidetrack myself again...
This is what I've sorted out as probable criteria:
- PRICE vs amount/potency, value;
- strain name / brand name or both;
- packaging, whether or not lab test results are present;
- corporate, global or interstate product with a bar code versus an independent, in-house one;
- tank style - plastic or glass or metal or some combination thereof;
- wick type - cotton, unclear, wickless, etcetera;
- dual coil, single coil, titanium coil, no idea because the design makes it unclear or the packaging doesn’t specify;
- is it stuck shut or can it be opened and refilled?;
- recycle-able or return-for-a-credit type of plan for the eventually consumed cartridge;
- additives (polyethylene glycol, some other WTF) or pure oil?;
- terpenes in proper proportion to the rest of the experience, or cranked up to 11?;
- reliability/variability from one batch to the next;
- access - instagram, facebook, twitter - any in-store demonstrations, promos or give-aways.
Anyway, this is just to say that the rest is churning about in the cement mixer of my primitive editing mind. I've already given it a draft or two, but am still finishing it up. Soon to come, right here on this page...an attempt to collate my experiences vaporizing cannabis concentrate products available for the medicinal use of an adult patient in 2017 and a few years preceeding.
