Some thoughts on vapor

First, I have to say that getting "Da Buddha" from 7th Floor was one of those moments that changes your perspective. Like when I got Tivo, I didn't really understand the implications until using it for a while.
Vaporizers sound like a good idea when researching them, there are testimonials of all kinds extolling the virtues of vapor vs. smoke. Unfortunately, they seem too good to be true.. This is what prevented me from getting one for the longest time, as well as the cost, of course. ( have you priced a volcano ? )
A few months back, I found "Da Buddha" online, as an alternative to the SSV. ( Silver Surfer , 7th Floor ) It was a reasonable price ( under $200 ), so I bought one direct from their website. Let me just say that in many contacts, dealing with this company has been very easy.
The vaporizer comes with everything you need to get started, but being very old-school, I had never purchased a grinder. It is necessary to have one, I've found out, so got a good, big one.
Using this passive device is easy, just suck your material into the wand and insert it in the heater. Inhale, and that's it. Now, one major difference between the passive and bag design is that the bag mixes all of your vapor together. What this means is that you get all the same mixture of cannabinoids, every time. With the passive design, you get the lower boiling materials first, such as the aromatics (120+ C), then the THC (149.3 C) , and finally CBD (206.3 C) and CBN (212.7 C). This vapor profile , or fractionation can have some interesting results depending on how you use your device.
The three variables you have to balance : amount of material, temperature of the heater, and draw speed ( sucking ). Along with the tendency of the material to boil off more and more vapor and become hotter, you may need to adjust your use slightly.
Another interesting result is the true flavor profile you get. Much more intense than smoking. This flavor, of course, changes from strain to strain, but I've found that cheap material is best burned. The taste in the vaporizer is bad, and ruins the experience.
I've had my device long enough to purchase accessories for it, and custom glassware. This is only for show, really, but the pieces are very well made. Now one of the best accessories is the "ice chamber" that will filter your vapor through ice water. ( Looks like a bong ). Cool moist air is much preferred on your throat.
Be aware, if you thought you coughed only from smoke, think again. Vapor will make you cough if concentrated enough so be prepared... Don't blow into the tube by accident, it can blow the material on to the heating element and burn. If you do have a flame-out in your wand, replace the screen.

One more interesting note; as one day i was out of material I was looking for a way to get some more.. My plants were halfway through flowering and not ready. I had the idea to pick off a small flower and place it in my wand. Still wet, just off the plant, it takes some time to heat up, but when it does, it provides very fresh vapor. So to sum up, you can vape wet flowers in a pinch, and get almost equal results. I hope someone else can repeat this finding.

The Man

My buddy just got a buddha and its great. Bought it new for 170$. Worth every penny.

I suppose I have a few more things to add about vapor. TokinGLX on youtube can show you the 7th floor products and some vaporizing techniques.
You really do use less. My experience has been much less used material for the same effect when vaporized well.
Leftovers : you will find that both the vaporized material and the tar buildup on the glass still has some potency. For the wand hash, the included poker is helpful to scrape it out. Vape it. It's the most potent mixture I've been able to produce. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLlLceYb24M
For the "ash", I collect it in a jar, and occasionally make a liquor with a everclear ( 95% ethyl alcohol ) wash, collect the liquid and dilute it with water to a reasonable proof. Interesting taste. Similar to "green dragon", although less potent and almost no THC. In this case you would use it for the heavier cannabinoids that do not fully vaporize, which produces a relaxing sleepy feeling.
One feature I would like to see on this type of vaporizer in the future, is an automatic shutoff or timer. Too many times I have used it and then wandered away without turning it off. You don't unplug it btw, the temperature knob has an off position. It is relatively safe to leave on for a period of time. After about an hour at medium temperature, the aluminum case is warm, but no issue.

For anyone who has tried both Da Buddha and The Silver Surfer...

Price differences aside, which one would you choose and why? Just out of curiosity.

Iron Lion Zion said:

For anyone who has tried both Da Buddha and The Silver Surfer...

Price differences aside, which one would you choose and why? Just out of curiosity.

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For the Silver Surfer ( SSV ), the angle of the device and heater is useful for not spilling your wand. From what i can tell, the main difference between the two is the wand and the heater cover and how the two come together.
The standard SSV has a "female" wand and "male" heater cover, which means you have to hold the wand in place as you are vaporizing, or use the metal hands-free attachment. ( pain in the ass I'm sure ) Something else to note, the hot air stream is much smaller diameter in the SSV design.. how this effects vaporization, I do not know.
Da Buddha has a standard ground glass connection, and the wand is the "male" end. Since it is horizontal, the wand will stay in the heater.
That said, they now offer the standard ground glass for the SSV. The glass connection appears to have enough friction to stay in place, even at an angle.
My best guess is the internal components are the same.

To answer your question : I don't think there is enough feature difference between the two. I would go with which one looks better, to be honest. The SSV is more expensive, that would be my only practical consideration.

Attached : DBV standard heater cover and wand.

Had another thought : The vaporizer also changes the way I think about the harvesting process. When preparing to use flowers, it's best to trim the leaves down as much as possible and make nice, pretty buds. This is primarily so that there is a higher percentage of resin to mass, and therefore more usable vapor ( good ) and less "smoke" and leaf taste ( bad ).
However, when preparing for vaporization, the careful trimming down to flowers is not as critical. The vapor concentration using the vaporizer is so pure and clean, that this ratio of resin to mass is not as important. In fact, is sometimes easier to inhale the vapor with a certain amount of leaf material to "water it down" slightly. For very high resin strains, this makes the vapor slightly less potent and less chance of coughing. For the last batch, I simply removed the larger leaves as usual, and dried the entire plant without trimming. After, I removed the larger stems, and stored it. This simplifies the process so much, and allows me to use much more.

One last stoned thought tonight.
"Smoking" is where you burn and inhale material, is "Vaping" or "Vaporizing" the equivalent word ? Like, "He vaped until he forgot he was vaping."
I've been confused when talking about the vaporizer, and not just because I was high. For example, What you call the amount of material that you inhale at one time ? Is the measurement a "bowl", like "He vaped like 6 bowls and passed the fuck out" or is it "He vaped three wands and said he couldn't feel his toes".
What about a hit ? The same I think. A hit is a hit.

Man o' the green said:

One last stoned thought tonight.
"Smoking" is where you burn and inhale material, is "Vaping" or "Vaporizing" the equivalent word ? Like, "He vaped until he forgot he was vaping."
I've been confused when talking about the vaporizer, and not just because I was high. For example, What you call the amount of material that you inhale at one time ? Is the measurement a "bowl", like "He vaped like 6 bowls and passed the fuck out" or is it "He vaped three wands and said he couldn't feel his toes".
What about a hit ? The same I think. A hit is a hit.

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Getting your use out of that vape i see lol.

Smoking can be a relatively quick process. Vaping, on the other hand, can take some time. Not because it is a poor delivery system, but that the material never burns and places you on a time constraint. When first using the vape, I went with my smoking experience and quickly depleted the sample. ( or so I thought )
The vapor profile when inhaling from this type of device ( passive, no bag ) is interesting, the first two or three hits are not very active and taste good. There is little need to hold this in your lungs very long. The next few hits build up to your optimal sample temperature ( where any remaining moisture is removed ), give you the most potent THC hits and cause the most coughing. One thing I know, but haven't followed too well is the need to stop your inhale on heavy vapor. When vaporizing, you can easily take in a hit that will cause you to cough. The trick is to stop well before you feel any effects from the inhale.
As the sample heats up to higher temperatures, the heavier cannabinoids are released. As you continue to hit, the concentration of vapor to air drops, until the point where you give up. Where you give up is entirely up to you. If you want to dump it after you get the best THC hits, feel free. I personally like the entire set of bioactives that can be extracted.
As you can let the material stay in the wand with the heater on for many minutes even if not passing hot air over it. How long you continue to inhale is not determined by what is left to "burn". You can never totally vaporize all usable resin, so save your vaporized remains and do a solvent or lipid extraction. I've heard that you can smoke it, but I have not tried.
In this way, I can fill up a wand and inhale every few minutes, letting my lungs rest between and still achieve an intense high. If full, I've been able to use a wand for up to an hour, slowly.
The more material that you place in your wand, the more you will need to stir it. You can use the metal poker ( included ) to move the material around, and re-insert, otherwise the sample does not get heated uniformly. You can get unexpected heavy vapor this way after stirring a large amount of material.
Suggestions : when sharing a vape with a friend, you might be interested in using vodka to dip the mouthpiece in. Hot water, combined with vodka, or much better, everclear (95%) is the best way to clean the inner surfaces of the glassware and is not toxic. The vaporizer itself stays totally clean, only the wand, tube and mouthpiece need cleaning. Breathing vaporized alcohol is interesting as well. Just don't inhale rubbing alcohol, not so good for you, so make sure it's dry before you use it. One way to keep your screen clean is to dip it periodically in alcohol. The disadvantage is you dissolve some good resin out that you could collect.

I realize I try to go to great lengths to keep from coughing, this is out of a desire to use the sample as efficiently as possible. However, it should be noted that some of my best highs and body sensations occurred during/after a good coughing fit. I'm sure someone has raised this before, but is there a good scientific reason why a cough makes me higher ?

Here is my thought : the raised blood pressure during coughing causes dilation of blood vessels in the brain, increasing the overall blood-brain permeability to the cannabinoids, and raising their concentration more quickly around the specific receptors.

Other than the scientific babble, does this happen to you as well ?

Man o' the green said:

I realize I try to go to great lengths to keep from coughing, this is out of a desire to use the sample as efficiently as possible. However, it should be noted that some of my best highs and body sensations occurred during/after a good coughing fit. I'm sure someone has raised this before, but is there a good scientific reason why a cough makes me higher ?

Here is my thought : the raised blood pressure during coughing causes dilation of blood vessels in the brain, increasing the overall blood-brain permeability to the cannabinoids, and raising their concentration more quickly around the specific receptors.

Other than the scientific babble, does this happen to you as well ?

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Not a doctor or anything -
While what you said might be part of the equation for feeling higher, I think it would be due to lack of oxygen to the brain - instead of air filling your lungs with oxygen you are obviously filling it up with smoke/vapor. The fact that you cough means either 1) whatever you put into your lungs agitated it or 2) you tried to put too much into your lungs, also agitating them... No oxygen to the brain = dizzy/woozy/being more tired/whatever ... so along with smoking the lack of oxygen could just amplify these feelings.

Again, this is just my guess.

So when I'm sitting alone, vapin, I think, and come up with some ideas that seem really great at the time, but don't seem to stand up to sobriety. However, one in ten of those thoughts is actually interesting or useful. I thought about a problem today .. how to most effectively use leaves, trim, stems. Yeah, I know it's been gone over a million times, but I need to know what is best and easiest for me. I was thinking I could extract it with oil, vape it and get something useful out of it. Drawback would be cleaning oil out of my vape. I actually did this a few months back with some trim, the cannabutter method, but with olive oil instead. I put it on the shelf and forgot about it. I've tried it a few times, and where it would be edible, it's not worth the taste. Next experiment will be trying to vaporize the canna-oil.

I tried the oil now in the vaporizer. I waited a few minutes. And nothing. It tasted horrible until something burned off out of the oil. Very bad burnt taste, definitely the oil. Now I gotta clean my wand with some soap. Bummer. If I had any result, I would have tried a cleaner oil. Not worth the effort.

So off the topic of vapes, has anyone rolled a joint with what's leftover in roaches ? I did and wasn't that impressed. What is your experience ?

I used my glass bowl, for the first time in months, just now. I'm surprised by the intensity of the hit, my memory was of a much milder rush. It seems to be at a moderate intensity (80% maybe) compared to the vape's best output. A big difference was how many hits i got.
Three very small hits on the bowl was all that it would allow :
hit and intensity
1 : 80%
2 : 80%
3 : 70% ( cough )
But with the same sample amount, I was able to get 10 hits off the vaporized sample. The progression was :
1 : 20%
2 : 40%
3 : 70% ( first visible vapor )
4 : 50% ( then stir sample )
5 : 100% ( cough )
6 : 70%
7 : 50% ( then stir again )
8 : 50%
9 : 20%
10 : 10% ( last visible vapor and effect )

I know this is nowhere near scientific, but I thought I should document what I experienced.

Man o' the green said:

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You are a salesman.

The Real Peter Parker said:

You are a salesman.

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I truly wish I was, there are great products out there. But no, just to be clear to everyone, I get nothing for my efforts here, nor do I want anything.

I have a Da Buddha myself and highly recommend it and as for the coughing and why it get you higher is that when you cough more blood vessels in your lungs are used thus sending more highness around your body after it hits your brain first ,I'm high as fuck at the moment it took me 20 mins to write this lol

Man o' the green said:

So when I'm sitting alone, vapin, I think, and come up with some ideas that seem really great at the time, but don't seem to stand up to sobriety. However, one in ten of those thoughts is actually interesting or useful. I thought about a problem today .. how to most effectively use leaves, trim, stems. Yeah, I know it's been gone over a million times, but I need to know what is best and easiest for me. I was thinking I could extract it with oil, vape it and get something useful out of it. Drawback would be cleaning oil out of my vape. I actually did this a few months back with some trim, the cannabutter method, but with olive oil instead. I put it on the shelf and forgot about it. I've tried it a few times, and where it would be edible, it's not worth the taste. Next experiment will be trying to vaporize the canna-oil.

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large bump but I think something should be said for your health.
I'm vaping some kush and cooking some cannaoil right now and IMO the vaping of cannaoil is an idea that seems really great at the time, but won't seem to stand up to sobriety. Oil is pretty flammable dude, I am not too sure what kinda vape you have but watch that heating element.
Also try and let your vaped remains sit in water for 24 hrs before you cook with them to remove alot of the nasty taste which comes off in the water and keep the THC which stays on the vaped residue.
hope that helps a bit
peace