ok, so i have had some time (ca. 2 months) to play with my vapman now. i am really fond of it.
i bought & sold a couple of vapes over the years, and have a modest collection by comparison i think: some dynavaps, a woodscents, a firewood 7, and now a vapman.
there is some redundancy of course, but mostly i feel all these vapes have their particular use scenarios. and honestly, i cannot think of a scenario where one of the above wouldnt be perfectly fine or 'appropriate'. this is of course how i felt prior to thinking of purchasing the vapman too.
no need to cry about vas though. this was a good purchase. i like the way it handles, the ritual of using it. i like its looks somewhere between steampunk & actually kind of pretty. it feels cute in a very serious way. and most importantly: i am a micro-doser, and in this regard, for me, this vape fits like a glove
i feel torn on how well the vapman is suited for outdoor use. it is super portable of course, but it is hard to see the torch flame in sunlight. without being able to see it, heating the vapman takes lots of experience to guess right. but ultimately it just takes more patience. i recently took it kayaking, and while heating it in bright sunshine & with a stiff breeze on the water was mostly hit & miss - it worked eventually of course, and made a great trip superb. it could be the herb variety i have been using in it lately, but i could swear the way the vapman tints the world is in its own fluffy category. i really like its signature.
it is also the first vape i have successfully used with hash. i have had this really old but once upon a time quite good piece of hash - now a solid rock with the long neglect. this piece had been around unharmed for years because i never found a vaporiser working well enough with it. i had tried the vape-wool dynavap combo, and while it kind of worked, it was not a lot fun. though it is possible i never used enough heat i suppose?
shaving off some flakes & putting them on the microdosing sieve in the vapman worked like a charm, 4 seconds heat on / off :II was perfect. i never had this kind of experience with hash in a vaporiser, and it makes we want to acquire more hash.
so i am mostly very very happy with it. the one thing i am not crazy about is keeping the bowl clean. i used the vapman a lot these past couple months, and i have been neither particularly careful nor neglectful in its maintenance. there has been the occasional combustion event too. this is as clean as it gets after wiping it down with alcohol:
and since i came across this
Now.. this is not to say all copper used in vapes is bad. One example would be the bowl in the Vapman. The difference with the Vapman is that they use the copper as a heat conductor and it is covered with gold plate so there is no oxidation. To date, I have not heard of that gold plate chipping off in any way to expose the copper. So there should be no threat of exposure to oxidation with that vape.
i really do hope that the gold covering is not damaged to the point of exposing the copper. i would not know how to identify this.
but apart from this, i am really happy with the vapman. and if i ever should ever be in a position where i am not sure what to do with my money - i'll likely buy a bunch more. they are so small.
