The Firewood 11. Man does she rip.
Just wanted to put pen to paper on some thoughts about this uniquely badass device and the experience I've had getting to know it better, particularly as I've learned its nuances coming from more of the traditional session vaping world (Air Max/Mighty) and butane stick world (Woodwynd/M7 Dynavap). Massive S/O to u/highartisan_ for the incredibly crafted terp pill stem that has unlocked the full spectrum of usage for this beast while allowing me to tame it pretty well with a few interesting techniques and tips/tricks I'll detail for y'all below.
First things first - don't do what I did. This is in no way, shape, or form meant to scare you from using the device. You SHOULD buy this thing and learn from the mistakes I already made. Before I got my terp pill stem and WPA, I would run this thing through the native stem all the way up to 420. To be clear, it won't create any long-term damage but I would not recommend doing this. The human respiratory tract is quite durable but I'll say not knowing what I was doing, I set myself into pure edible land for a good week+ not knowing where the proper temperatures should be capped with the stock glass stem that the device comes with. My experience and testing shows that 350 F on back-to-back hits in session style, or 360 F with intentional fluttering (more on that below) and/or one-off hits in true on demand style is as hot as I'd ever run it with the stock stem - we'll get to a core concept of thermal drift when we get into the terp pill stem below. Even if you curl your tongue up to block the jet stream of hot air, 370 just won't be cool enough for the stock stem to offload heat adequately without terp pills or more length and you will feel the raw stripping power of convection air in your throat, in my case especially the top of the mouth - again, I've learned as I've gone with this one.
Which brings me to my second point - fluttering. I've found this to be the true unlock for this device not only because it enables you to use the stock stem more comfortably for back to back hits, but also because of the flavor unlock. I'll typically start a draw a two or three seconds after the at-temp buzz without heat soaking much, start pulling slow for about 4 seconds, release the button for about 3 while still drawing air in, and then hit the button again for another 3-4 seconds before clearing the remaining vapor out after releasing for the last couple seconds. I gradually increase my airspeed over this entire process from very slow initially to medium-medium fast and frankly the combo of fluttering plus air speed increase yields insane clouds, even at 350 F. You gain incredibly pure flavor while also maintaining cooling without notably dampening the cloud yield. When using the stock stem, I would recommend always using some variant of this strategy. Thermal drift occurs when your baseline temp across multiple back-to-back bowls actually increases up to 15 F higher than what you've set the temp at and occurs most pointedly when you do NOT flutter. This is the caution I’d recommend keeping in mind while running 360 on back to backs if you're not intentionally fluttering the hit, as it'll push you into 370+ throat stripping land.
Which brings me to my High Artisan stem. I can't even begin to stress enough how much you should consider purchasing an after-market stem for the Firewood. All of the limitations that I described before in terms of temp capping pretty much go away when you swap out from the stock stem. I'd say that 380 and above is a bit "dry" on the mouth and throat while 370 fully extracts out the heavier caryophelline, humulene, CBN, etc comfortably to the extent you don't really need to go any higher than that temp unless you want to clear a bowl in one go - for that use case I'd recommend running at 390 F min / 400 F max using the WPA on a glass piece with a minimal amount of water to ensure hydration for comfort. Does this put 380 F in a bit of a no-mans land? Kinda. You don't get the extraction strength to clear the bowl in one go but also mute out most of the flavor, so wouldn't recommend unless you decide to run a temp step from 360 up to 380 with the WPA in lieu of a 390 one-hit wonder. I’ve personally had better experience temp stepping from 350 to 370 using the high artisan stem w/o needing to hook up to a rig, so take that for what you will.
To that point, 90+% of the time I'm using just my High Artisan stem, whereas the stock stem is nice for hikes where I wouldn't even dare to possibly break my nice stem, and WPA is solid for one-hit extractions in the realm of something like a ball vape. The level of versatility, convenience, the range of use cases, and the organic feel of holding something hand-crafted from wood in my hand has been a refreshing change-up to my routine while still enabling remarkably effective “pseudo” session usage like I’m used to with the hybrid heating ceramic bowl, with the option to simply take one-off hits purely convectively in a way a session vape would never accommodate.
Can’t recommend picking up one of these enough, and I’m really curious to hear folks’ experiences with the updated model (main difference is it uses a quartz bowl as opposed to ceramic so the thermal retention I imagine should be lower). Hopefully this is helpful to someone somewhere out there. The Firewood has far exceeded my expectations and become my daily driver, and I’m sure it could easily fill that same role for you too. Happy vaping y'all!