Salutations DrGreenthumb,
Keen-Newport... 'near zero impurities'...
Locally i get the London, it's below 30 ppm i think. The Ronson was so terrible i felt necessary to purge multiple times using London butane gas instead. Last time i searched for some in Montreal i found small canisters with no filter makings, then finally a 7x Clipper can which i decided was certainly welcome on a temporary schedule.
Butane shouldn't have a taste, whatever you tasted wasn't butane, more likely some sulphurous smell added to it.
Proper burning of butane doesn't annoy me, it's beneficial because of the water vapor it generates. Even better: i believe such inlet moisturization actually improves the vaporization process taking place in my cannabic bowl. It smells when i lit or kill a flame near my nose, for example, or during a purge of the combustible tank. Butane is a solvant after all, as i recall. Maybe it's only an impression but the smell intensifies with longer delays between purges. I fear the gas is leaching synthetics inside or something. Please tell me it's only my imagination gone wild!...
I guess most of the contaminants will burn...
Burned contaminants are still contaminants. Although it's easy to control degradation in delicate organic structures to render them comestible (e.g. while cooking) it's another story at an atomic scale where heavy metal remains heavy metal, etc. Even the virtues of sterilization are limited, the lesser contaminants the better!
...a torch/jet lighter should have a cleaner, hotter flame that doesn't leave any soot.
Yes, i can observe that routinely. However while using a blue flame with my modded VG pipe i must be careful to proceed promptly or i'll be smoking wood...
...if it's less than ideal conditions...
That's my point and it was how i came to adopt a flexible tubing extension providing direct eye-contact on the front SiC puck and my blue flame. Additionally, i've shortened the sphere top by a couple mm after observing frequent self-extinguishing tendencies initially: the flame collector required just a tad more room to "breath" correctly i figure. In any case operation errors are under the exclusive control of the user himself, i've suggested ways to personalize a VG pipe but it could have been another product with similar butane heating... The Vapocane supported 2 modes, 1 where the clean exhaust of burned butane made contact with the lung path. It must have worked quite well in this mode except with a metal radiator in my pipe's heat-exchanger it would be possible to turn the front puck red using an auxiliary path separated from the main lung path exactly. A Vapocane does just that by design: pre-heat it and then stored energy works alone with no butane burning flame around. But this is glass and that's brittle, so i much prefer the NimbinVap concept. That one might provide the "ideal conditions" in terms of visual feedback and as a former newbie VG pipe user i recall that was a most determining factor, to see what we're doing!...
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
...if the flame isn't getting enough oxygen...
That should happen to you if you attempt to turn a 4 mm thick SiC modded VG front puck red-hot sufficiently to have a toke from the collected heat + stored energy.
I doubt you need to worry...
I do because others do. I've started using the pipe 2 springs ago after all...
Harmful contaminants are more likely to come from the pipe or the lighter itself.
Jetables are no option if i can help it and i only buy filtered butane gas. I've seen one of my brand new units (from Canadian Tire) being filled with a Ronson bottle so it was necessary to repair that mistake once at home. Then i found this particular model has a weak screw attachment point that will break easily during a fall. I'd attempt to find something sturdier that is more predictible/reliable but i've experienced what i needed to acquire and butane burning for pre-heating purposes really corresponds to the "Plan-B" scenario as far as i'm concerned: the SiC puck should be pre-heated using an IH radiator to convert the injected energy packet into a burst of convective heat, with the cannabic bowl maintained wight below the "trigger" temperature via thermostatic (Curie effect) conductive heat (at the point of contact). Pre-heating would be performed in a matter of second using the power and versatility of an IH driver, then butane burning can contribute the final touch by providing both optimized transport convection heat (because of the water vapor) and consequently self-conditioning where convenient moisture is added to perform its own magic: a packet-burst of IH pre-energized water-potentiated vaping stream may be where i need to go next!...
8)
Hopefully they didn't use Chromated_copper_arsenate or anything else nasty to preserve the wood in your pipe. Hopefully you didn't get a copy painted with lead paint.
I've taste the wood and even its finish, evidently that's calling for enhancements but i guess this proof-of-concept has went a far stretch already!
Good day, have fun!!
