Hi Guys - Happy Mother’s Day
SHIPPING UPDATE
This week we are taking a bit of a breather to reset, re-tool and re-stock and will not be dropping any units until the end of the week. This coming weekend is MAY 24, which if you know anything about Canada at all, you know is a massive holiday when the pale and pasty winter skin is exposed to sunlight for the first time in six months. We will be getting everything ready to go ahead of time so the Victoria Day holiday shouldn't impact deliveries.
VESTRATTO has been improving our “order to ship delay” times by having a greater percentage of the Anvil parts and accessories pre-assembled and ready to go. This week we are implementing a bit more of an assembly line flow to our processes with the new racking and storage equipment we purchased. Sounds a bit mundane but if VESTRATTO is ever going to become the “AMAZON of VAPES” then we have to keep improving our business infrastructure in line with our technology. Who knows - maybe there will come a day when we’ll deliver a pizza with your Anvil and even claim “30 minutes or its free”?
Both of us experience delays on Order Changes. In the 24 hours after a drop we routinely receive over 100 emails. No kidding. Please be a bit more patient if you check-out of the store, and then email to change a colour, add a bowl etc. Your order has to be pulled off the line and re-processed manually. We are thrilled to be able to accommodate but - to re-iterate - we are not Amazon and that manual process takes a bit of time. It has become obvious to us that this level of service (practically it means consolidating and saving on shipping) isn’t that common in the “basic online fulfillment industry” because our shipping software, once a pick-list is pulled, doesn’t backwards/forwards link with Shopify to update. I’m not saying these post check-out changes are a big deal, but because we currently have to make them manually it takes some time. We are not going to get to it this month but in June we have set a project plan to bring in a Shopify Consultant and build the software infrastructure to mange these exceptions more seamlessly.
HEAT-UP TIMES AND ESTRATTO
VESTRATTO - vapore estratto (italian) - vapour extraction (english) - ride the line (ANVIL)
The CopperCore and CopperBlock thermal reservoir do a great job helping you dial in the estratto roast you want repeatably and reliably. Check out Whiff’s posts on Instagram and the Vestratto Discord for some great tips and tricks in getting the most out of your ANVIL experience. We also put a lot of effort into the individual herb chamber designs to try and improve, primarily, the flavour. With a vape like the ANVIL, with its’ solid thermal mass, full extraction is readily achievable. But “flavourful full extraction” takes a bit more work.
The ANVIL works by heating the outer jacket with a torch. I’d say “currently works” because we are working on the IH. Depending on the point of heating thermal energy is moved longitudinally along the ANVIL, and circumferentially around it by the CopperCore. The copper is completely obedient, and fast, in shifting heat from hotter regions to cooler. Heat is transmitted to the herb chamber primarily through the loosely contacting threaded region associated with the location of the SNAP discs. If you heat near the threaded region the SNAP occurs faster and total stored
energy in the oven is small. If you heat up near the CopperBlock, the SNAP is delayed resulting in the total stored energy in the oven being much larger.
If you heat, for example, with a 5/8 inch (1.25 cm) inner blue flame at the centre of the oven the thermal SNAP discs will actuate after about thirty seconds yielding the beautiful tan roast on the left. That same flame, applied directly to the CoperBlock thermal reservoir will result in about a 45 second click. The extra heat stored in the oven, when transmitted into the convection air stream, will generate that dark coffee coloured estratto on the right. The secret to preserving flavour during those extended heating cycles is to keep the inner herb chamber cooler than the outer oven so the terpenoids, which boil at lower temperatures, do not evaporate away. Thermal isolation is accomplished by the air slot thermal breaks that allow convection air into the chamber, but do not allow conduction heat to propagate up its walls. Unavoidably some conduction zones are required to establish and maintain the mechanical structure of the herb chamber. Our patent applications actually disclose the a spring mounted herb chamber with the conduction zone being limited in its extreme to the cross section of a single wire. The conduction zones on two representative bowls are highlighted by the red arrows. Between the letters on the VESTRATTO logo screen, and the support posts on the full bowl. After approximately 100 uses you can really start to see how effective Anvil’s thermal breaks are. The yellowing oxide layer (hot), is largely isolated below the slot/thermal break while the herb chamber’s walls maintain a more silvery (cool) colour. I’ll be interested to see how the new XL bowl evolves over time.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ANVILLE?
The 5,000 mile journey begins with a single step. We are hoping this trickle of 3rd Party support becomes a flood as time goes on.
Cheers
John