E-Smokes Revisited

Back in October of last year, I wrote a blog piece about the new subsection of the smoking hobby, the increasing popularity of e-cigs.  To recap, a typical e-cig is something roughly like the diagram to the left - A battery, an atomizer, and some sort of cartridge to hold the flavored liquids that replace tobacco as the "smoke".  There are a thousand varieties of these devices now, and all boast the one great advantage over tobacco in that they produce only moist vapor, not smoke, and are legally enjoyable in non-smoking spaces (Whether the proprietor will allow them is another story, as many locations request e-cig puffers to not "light up" simply because it "looks like smoking"... a damning indictment of the hypocrisy behind the suppression of smoking as a public health hazard).  But these little things are clean, pretty safe, don't leave lingering odors, and can be dropped into a pocket without burning a hole in one's shirt.  While I know many traditionalists will scoff and dismiss them as toys, I don't think they are going away.  My personal opinion is that we are looking at the future of smoking for the iPod generation.

I've had a few of these devices for about a year now.  My small collection consists of a Janty Ego:

... a standard 510 model:

...and a couple of dead DSE-601 e-pipes:

As you can guess by my modifier above, the DSE-601 epipe is trash - Don't waste your money.  It's designed so that the atomizer is a permanent part of the bowl, so that when it fails (Typically within 2 months), the entire bowl section must be replaced at a $40-50 cost.  While I know lots of former cig smokers who love these things and think replacing the bowl every month is no big expense compared to boxes of cigarettes, it is galling to a pipe guy accustomed to buying a pipe and keeping it forever.

The Janty and the 510 have kept on plugging, however.  An aftermarket atomizer has failed while the Janty's original unit soldiers on, and the 510's atomizers continue to work just fine.  If anything, I would say that the budget 510 delivers a superior smoke to the Janty (Better flavor, easier draw), but it isn't made nearly as well, and leaks fluid in rest.

So, what are my observations of e-cigs from a year's use?  They don't replace pipes, but they do have their value.  They excel at portability - If I'm going over to the pipe shop and only have ten minutes to sit and chat, I don't want to bother taking a pipe and having to fool with filling, lighting, etc, when I can stick an e-cig in my shirt pocket with a dropper bottle of my fluid flavor of choice, smoke it as long as I want, and not have hot ashes or mess to contend with.  The downsides?  Well, they are appliances, first and foremost.  I have yet to see an e-smoke device that anyone is going to love like a handmade wood pipe.  It's a very throwaway culture, where the smokers buy the coolest new gadget and use it for a few months and then dump it in favor of a new model with different features.  This is the opposite universe from my world of guys who buy pipes and keep them and use them for forty years.

Also, they're amusingly seasonal, at least for me.  I enjoyed them all through last Fall and then stopped smoking them entirely when winter hit, because the cool metal cylinders just did not provide the warmth in the hand and the full, heavy latakia flavors that I craved on cold winter nights.  I nearly forgot about them, but when springtime rolled around I dug them out again because they're better summer smokers than pipes - There's nothing like sitting on the back porch drinking a root beer and smoking a chocolate/banana flavor blend on a dusky summer evening.  E-cigs excel at sweet tooth flavors and are generally mediocre to lousy at tobacco flavors, at least in my experience so far.  The latakia and perique liquids have little in common with their tobacco counterparts, but where a caramel-waffle-flavored tobacco would make me gag, such a flavor in an e-cig is likely to be delicious.

(Note - Some lawmakers are already stirring up noise over just this sort of flavorful e-cig blend because it "appeals to children".  Never mind the fact that e-cig blends can be enjoyed completely without nicotine, chemicals, or any additives other than food flavorings...  They don't want to see anyone "smoking" because Fuck You, that's why.)

I mentioned in the closing of my last e-cig post that I was considering a Talbert epipe - Now, a year later, I still am.  I've sourced the parts I need and have all the bits on hand to put together test samples, but just haven't had the spare time to work on it.  A number of people have inquired about when I will have some for sale, and the answer is still, "No time soon."  I need to build a few, experiment with them, live with them, and generally get the feel of the mechanics of the things before I'd even consider making anything for sale.  The big issue for me lies in whether it would be possible to marry the charms of a briar pipe with the convenience of an epipe - Only time and experimentation will tell.

That e-Smoke Thing

I hope to put together a report on the CORPS show soon, but at the moment I'm still waiting for a couple of photos to come in. We stupidly forgot to take our camera and thus have no record of our weekend, other than some vague drunken memories of Jeff Folloder dancing in the fountain in fishnet stockings. In the meantime, lacking photographic evidence, I want to write a few comments about an odd new phenomenon, the e-pipe and e-cig. Here are mine:

 

These two unusual devices in the picture above are for smoking - Yes, smoking, but not of tobacco nor any other combustible weed.  They're e-smokes, part of a new wave of high tech toys that allow us to enjoy smoking in more places and without the health cautions of tobacco.  In the background is my Janty eGo, a sort of electronic cigarette/cigar that's simple, extremely convenient, and very reliable.  In the foreground is my DSE601 epipe, a more familiar but less likable device.  Both work just like pipes - You put them to the mouth, puff, and enjoy flavorful smoke, but that's where the similarity ends.  Here's a look at their insides:

The bowl of the pipe contains a rechargeable battery.  In the base of the shank is a tiny atomizer, which heats up when called to by a flow switch in the bowl that detects puffing.  Cartridges filled with mesh insert into the shank, much like a 9mm filter, and seat down onto the atomizer.  One buys blended flavors in liquid form from a variety of micro-blenders, just like in the pipe tobacco world, and drips droplets of these liquids into the cartridge mesh until it's soaked.  Then, the atomizer does its magic and the liquid becomes flavored vapor - Not smoke - that is enjoyed by the smoker.  The Janty is similar.  The long black part on the left is the battery section, then on the right we have the small brass atomizer and the mouthpiece components.

There is currently a great deal of media hype about these devices, with stories ranging from, "The cigarette smoker's solution!" to, "OMG! DANGER DANGER THEY WILL KILL YOU!"  In reality, the reputable blenders use FDA-approved flavoring ingredients in their FDA-approved liquid bases, which produce nothing but already-declared-safe vapor mist, the same you will get from fog machines.  It is true that you can put any liquid in there that you want to, and fry your brain smoking drain cleaner if you like, but you can do the same thing with any product from the local pharmacy, so the media scare tactics about the "dangers" of these devices are pretty facile.  


So what are they like?  In my opinion, pretty enjoyable.  I do not expect them to replace cigarettes or cigars or pipes, but I do think they are a handy alternative hobby/toy to enjoy in many circumstances where a briar pipe would be inconvenient.  I can drop the Janty into a shirt pocket without setting myself on fire, and pop it out to smoke for a few minutes without any need for filling, lighting, etc.  No ashes to deal with.  In fact, no by-products at all - The vapor mist dissipates quickly and usually leaves behind only a minimal scent of whatever flavoring you were enjoying (At the CORPS show, I smoked an aromatic banana-caramel-waffle blend, and our end of the table smelled like sweet breakfast food all weekend).  


I give the Janty much higher marks than the epipe, which is a very tepid piece of work.  It worked wonderfully in the beginning, but performance has degraded sharply with use, and I'm told that they tend to stop working after a month or two if used heavily.  The atomizers in the devices must be replaced periodically, because they wear out, but engineering is key here - The Janty atomizer is easily replaced for $9 and mine thus far shows no sign of wear, whereas the epipe's atomizer replacement costs $40 (!!).  When my epipe gives up the ghost, I do not intend to replace it, but I think my Janty is going to become a permanent part of my smoking hobby.  It's just my personal opinion, but I believe that Janty may well become the Dunhill of the e-smoke market.


This has run a bit longer than intended, so I'll sign off here for now.  If anyone has specific questions, let me know via comments or email, and I'll do my best to answer them in my next post on this subject, where I'll also talk a little about the various flavors, blends, DIY possibilities, and the very likely potential that there may be a handmade Talbert epipe in the future, done to my standards and aesthetics.