Primary fermentors for starters?

Just curious, has anybody tried simply using your primary fermenter for creating your starter? Seems like it would be very convienent and less opportunity for break downs in your sanitation process. You would simply go straight from the kettle on top of the starter....

A couple of disadvantages I could think of were:
-might be more difficult to decant if desired.
-might not fit on your stir plate if you have one (which I don't).

thoughts anyone?

I've been thinking about this recently myself. Especially for big starters.

Decanting should be ok if you have a fridge big enough to chill the carboy in.

You could make up for the lack of stir plate by creating a slightly larger wort too. So no real concern there.

For me, I'd have a hard time chilling the wort below 70 with my IC. It could take like 90 minutes. So being forced to pitch warm would be my only concern. Though, I could try to chill my kettle in my fridge before I rack on to the yeast.

If no one quashes this with a great argument I'm going to try it.

I use a counter flow chiller and pitch right on top of cake, seems like same thing to me

I pitch on my yeast cake too, but I rack off the other beer first. You should probably decant or rack off the starter wort from the yeast unless you're making a similar style.

I did this for a recent foray into high gravity brewing. I needed a 2L starter for a 19L batch of Imperial India Pale Ale so I made a starter with a SG of 1.030 in my 23L Better Bottle and pitched some Nottingham onto it. I poured the monstrous IIPA onto it a couple days later.

It was easy to get a good swirl-on inside the B.B. with 21L of head space; I just shook it up every couple of hours over a weekend.