How do people actually use the mythical drop? I know drops are supposed to be 20/ml, so why don't people just say 0.05ml? And where do these magical drops come from? I've never found any dripper or dropper or pipette that counts out to 20 drops per ml, I've counted out 30 from some, 37 from others and I've seen other people count 58 drops per ml from other droppy things.
How on earth am I to follow people's recipes when they say add 1 drop to 2ml of liquid? My drop might be 3x the size of their drop, or 1/3 the size of their drop.
It's a terrible unscientific method of measuring anything and I hate it as well. For mixing small amounts get 1ml syringes and make your own recipes. Don't depend on the drop people for recipes. The volume of a drop all depends on the viscosity of a liquid and the device you are delivering the drop from.
Use small syringes to measure small amounts or mix larger quantities of juice. I usually mix 15-30 ml and vape them over a week or two to see how the flavor changes after steeping.
the 20 drops per ml is based on water and doesn't work for ejuice.
Yeah, I use 1ml syringes which is part of why I'm so grrr when I see drops. I can deal with them when they are used as a ratio like: 3 drops Blue, 4 drops Green, 1 drop Red, mix at 10%.
I'm also annoyed with Menthol and how some say "fill 1/2 bottle with crushed crystals and fill with PG" which makes around a 50% solution, but the pre-made menthol drops are like 10% solution.
And people who say "20 drops of base + 1 drop flavor = 5%" when it should be 19 drops of base and 1 drop of flavor.
It just seems that all these "off by a little, so what?" errors add up to two people following the same recipe and getting quite different results, especially with the strong flavors that mix at 1-5% or flavors that have a really small sweet spot of strength.
Maybe I'll relax a bit when I find something I like enough to mix up 15-30ml at a time...
If you can get insulin needles they have .01-mL increments. In fact the last order I got had half unit markings so actually allowing .005-mL measurements.
The needles are tiny and easy to prick yourself with, I take a pair of needlenose, bent the tip into a small loop then yank the needle out of the syringe. Then I just stick the syringe right into the bottle when I make small batches.
You're not gonna convince them - I've been an evangelist for accurate measurement for the year and a half I've been mixing ;-)
I agree with deadguy - I just ignore recipes measured in drops.
I understand that the majority of folks mixing out there are using joose calculators which brings me to my other favorite rant, learning to do the math.
Some years ago my youngest son was more than irritated at me for not allowing him to use a school-issued calculator to do his algebra homework - I explained to him that if he could show his work he could use the calculator. Kid tried to bust me out to his algebra teacher, who said he supported the idea 100% and offered to let the kid turn the calculator back in ;-)
I've taken a little heat on other forums for suggesting one needs to understand the math before relying on a joose calculator as the number of people counting drops of 100mg nic base really gives me the willies.
I figure if you can do the math you can spot a data entry error in the calculator and if you can do the math I care not at all how you arrive at your recipe.
Okay, rant over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.
;-)
All through grades 1 through 12 we weren't llowed to use calculators in math class - this was in the 70's.
I've been thinking on this. I'd be happy to start a thread explaining how to do the math if people are interested; hopefully folks here could fill in the gaps in the learnings.
It's not real hard - anybody with eighth grade math skills and a pen and paper can do this stuff.
I'd like a source of some sort (like the Fannie Farmer that craptauer78 mentions) of Standard Mixing Protocols, or at least a thread to discuss such things.
I have a bunch of nagging little questions fueled by vague forgotten for 25 years Chemistry class about mixing things properly.
Like if we take 18mg/ml nic (i.e. 1.8%) and 100mg/ml (10%) then 1000mg/ml (1g/ml) would be 100%, and it just happens that Nicotine has a density right around 1g/ml (1.010 g/ml). So it makes sense that solution strength is calculated as g/ml. So... Menthol has a density of .89g/cm^3 so crush it up and 1.1ml of powdered Menthol is .98g and a 10% solution (using same 1g/ml as Nicotine) would be 1.1ml of Menthol + PG to make 10ml total (and 5.5ml + PG to 10ml to make a 50% solution). 50% is what Wizard Labs states as the solubility of Menthol in PG, and evidently you can get over 100% Menthol in PGA. So the common Menthol recipe of 1/2 bottle crystals + PG is basically the 50% saturated solution. But then there's Ethyl Maltol, with a density of 1.26g/cm^3 and the common recipe of 1/4 tsp for 10ml you actually get a 15% solution (vs the pre-made standard 10% solution). 1/4 tsp == 1.23ml @ 1.22g/ml == 1.5g... 1.5g in 10ml PG == 15%. So just like drops, some people's EM is 50% stonger than other people's EM.
And the final thing I haven't quite figured out is if Alcohol, PG, VG, Water all mix up with straight addition, i.e. 10ml PG + 10ml VG == 20ml. Because for instance 1ml Water + 1ml Alcohol is less than 2ml total, some of the molecules sorta fit in between each other. So if you have your 9ml of nic + PG base and add 1ml of Alcohol based flavoring do you get 10ml (10% flavoring) or do you get a bit less than 10ml total (some fraction over 10% flavoring). Should you add your flavorings, then your nic and then fill with PG/VG to the total volume? Or will it come out the same if you just add 1ml flavoring, 4ml PG, 2.5 ml PG, 2.5 ml PG nic (to make 10ml)?
I hope most of these nagging questions just boil down to "doesn't make a difference unless you're making gallons of liquid".
Nobody seems to be interested in standard mixing protocols at the consumer level ;-)
You're completely correct - some people's EM is stronger than others, which is one reason why I use a commercial EM preparation; Lorann Cotton Candy to be precise - mainly because I live within spitting distance of the Lorann factory ;-)
note Lorann cotton candy has stuff other than PG and EM in it. If you've got a sweet tooth it's quite the stuff.
Most of it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of difference unless you're making gallons of liquid - the only one that does make a difference is nicotine content and as I mentioned the number of people counting drops of 100mg nicotine makes me pretty nervous.
I use Wizard Labs 100mg nic in VG; they don't thin their VG nic and I figure you'd probably get less than ten drops per ml, not the 20 everybody figures for something with the viscosity of tap water. If someone doesn't pay attention when measuring poisons your 25mg DIY could turn out to be 50mg DIY.
An overstatement, I know - but then I have a flair for hyperbole ;-)
The rest of it just means if you don't measure accurately you'd likely make some nasty-tasting joose,
The mg/mL translation to percentage (by weight) is a standard based on water. I'd say the most important thing to know about the metric system is
1-g of water = 1 - mL = 1-cc (cubic centimeter)
So mg/mL is the same as g/L and since 1-L of water has a mass of 1-kg g/L is also ppt (parts per thousand) move the decimal one place to the left and you have parts per hundred or percent.
Your point about the density isn't important, because rather than convert the mass of the solid into a volume measurement using it's density you're simply using the mass of the water which doesn't require you looking up a density or doing any calculations.
To make up solutions such as EM yourself one method that will get you pretty consistent is to make a saturated solution, meaning add so much to the solvent that some crystals never dissolve. It takes a long time for EM to dissolve in water so it might take a week to prepare a bottle of EM. But since accurate scales are pretty expensive, it's a fairly simple way to get consistent results.
As to the blending of things like alcohol, PG and VG. I think it's very likely that you're correct and they may well lose (or possibly gain) total volume when blended. The total difference is most likely negligible and probably doesn't matter unless you're making gallons of liquids.
I think the answer to some extent is "it doesn't matter" because you're not mixing your own nicotine from pure nicotine. However it's always good to know.
It's also probably useless because there's a whole lot of stupidness in the vape world. Personally I cringe everytime I hear people say 12-mg nic. I imagine there are already vapers who don't understand that it really means 12-mg/mL and I know people cant wrap their head around it being 1.2%. It doesn't bother me so much in forum discussion because it's informal, but it worries me that it's the standard way to label liquid. If two bottles both say 12-mg nicotine, one is 15 mL and the other is 60-mL does that mean the 15-mL is four times stronger than the 60-mL? Ok rant is over.
i just finish checking all droppers/pipettes i had after my darn juice tasted way cinnamony.. it is suppose to be sweet potato pie, grrr... anyhows, out of all i had this: http://wizardlabs.us/index.php?route=product/product&filter_name=pipette&product_id=98 ...was the only thing that actually measured 20 drops per ml correctly 5 out of the 5 times i checked (water and flavorings only..did not verify pg or vg, did not see the point)
The point is that drop size changes with viscosity of liquid and the size of the dropper tip. Even though it's the same dropper the liquid will change. Also, don't use recipes with drops. Go by ml for volume.
Ya, measuring nic/pg/vg in drops would be silly. Some ingredients are so concentrated that drop measurements are really unavoidable. For example; caramel cappuccino from TFA, that mixes at 1 drop per 10ml. Try measuring that with a syringe.
The important bit is being able to recreate what you mix over and over.
At that point if it turns out that caramel cappuccino is something that you're going to consistently use you make a dilution. 1ml Caramel Cappuccino (TFA) to 10ml PG/VG and then use that as .5ml for a 20drop/ml drop or .25ml for a 40drop/ml drop. Then you can syringe or pipette with a modicum of accuracy. Your mix would be .5ml (diluted 10%) Caramel Cappuccino (TFA) + 9.5ml base+etc.
Ya, that's what I'd do if I wasn't completely grossed out by carpcap, that stuff would be nasty to me at 1 drop per 30ml. But the only accuracy being lost here with me using a dropper for small amounts is if I were sharing my recipes. I mix everything I mix exactly the same, every time, with a combo of syringe and dropper.
I use drops constantly, but only for seasonings like Koolada, Sour, Sweetener, etc. It's always with the same size dropper. I just notate it on my recipes like '2 drops per 5ml'.
I fine tune small blends with drops, but at some point when I make bigger batches I'd convert it to mL. And I wouldn't give someone a recipie that had drops. I think the worst examples I've seen are ones that have things like 32 drops and real high amounts like that.