-First of all, some of the bottles you get are not strictly the volume they say they are. It depends. Try filling a syringe with 5 ml water and shoot it into your 5 ml bottles. My 5 ml's are actually 7 ml. Same goes for 15 ml and 10 ml bottles in my experience. I fill one of each with 5-10-15 ml of water and keep them as a reference to make sure my juices level out to the right amount. For some reason the higher volume ones- 30, 50 ml etc.- tend to be more accurate in my experience. Still worth a check though.
-This one is important if you mix 5 ml samples. I typically use/used 14 gauge blunt needles from wizard labs. I discovered that when you fill a syringe with these, the needle itself holds ~ 0.2 ml. This isn't such a big deal when you are mixing big batches, but for samples it can totally throw off a mix if it all gets in your batch. I try not to use needles anymore, and if I do, I unscrew it before I inject the content into my mix.
-A trick I use that works in warmer climate- To effectively steep some juices with the heat method, after putting them in hot water for a little while to initially get the batch mixed together in the bottle, I take a small black plastic baggy and but the juices I want to steep in it, and I leave it on the dashboard of my car. On sunny days it will get very hot. The black baggy keeps the juice out of direct light, and it also absorbs heat more than any other color. I wouldn't do this if it gets very hot where you live though, because in very high temperatures the nicotine may degrade and so may the plastic of the bottle itself, and you don't want that in your mix.
-Wizard Labs has cheap TFA flavors. It is actually cheaper to get two 8 ml bottles of the same flavor from Wizard Labs than it is to get one 15 ml bottle from TFA itself. If you spend over I think $75 or $70 at Wizard Labs you get a free shipping option. For me it's cheaper if I'm at $65 or so to spend the extra money getting more products and therefore free shipping than to pay the $15 shipping charge.
-TFA Honeydew is a great flavor.
-It's simple to learn to do the calculations yourself rather than using a e-juice calculator. The nic mg you want divided by the nic mg of the solution you have equals the percentage needed to get to that nic mg. For example I want 18 mg I divide it by 100 mg which is what I have, I get .18 = 18% which is what I need to get there. 100 mg is easy because if you want 12 mg its going to be 12%, 6 mg 6% etc. My flavorings I calculate in units of one, each unit signifying .1 ml in a 5 ml mix. A 3-3-1 mix would be fourteen percent. If it is a 5 ml batch it would just be .3-.3-.1 if it was a ten ml batch you just multiply them 2 etc. This simplified things for me when I first started. I know it sounds confusing all together, but find your own way and learn to do it yourself, and it becomes much simpler. Don't fuck up though- double check all math!
-Be careful.
Breaking down your 100mg nic to 60mg is safer and even easier to calculate with. When working with 60mg, for every 10ml of juice:
- 6mg = 1ml nic
- 12mg = 2ml nic
- 18mg = 3ml nic
- ...
the math is not hard. one easy way is to figure the total mg of nic that is needed in the bottle you are making (like, 30 ml bottle x 8mg nic = 240 mg nic) then divide that by the nic concentrate (240/100=2.4) and use that many ml of the nic solution.
The biggest thing I've learned is don't go buying a 10ml bottle because the name sounds yummy or because it's cheaper.
Get small flavour 3-4ml, try them out, if you like em great, next time you can buy larger ones. But at 10% flavouring (so only 3ml in a 30ml ejuice batch), if you buy 10ml of a flavour you don't like it's going to sit on your shelf for eternity.
Along with this, I would say it's usually good to have a purpose for the flavors you are buying, especially after you already have a decent stock of base flavors. Know what you are going to use it for, and consider if you really need it. Try not to go buying 4 oz bottles of stuff you are going to use to put a hint in something. This shit adds up quickly.
The 8mls are $1.49 from Wizard; that's a great size to start with b/c you can usually make 3-4 sample batches, then if you like it you've got another 10ml mix or two to tide you over until the next order arrives.
> -TFA Honeydew is a great flavor.
How much of it do you tend to use, and what have you found it to mix well with?
It mixes well with a lot of things, really. It goes really well with a bit of TFA pear, though just a bit, because that pear can be sickeningly strong. My 50-50 mixes are almost all 14% flavor, and any amount of honeydew within that percentage would be good. It mixes well with passion and dragon fruit too. Also mango. I have a mix I like a lot- 2 sour, 2 dragon fruit, 2 passion fruit, and 1 honeydew. Each unit being .1 ml in a 5 ml sample, so .2-.2-.2-.1 --all TFA flavors. Also 3 sour 3 honeydew and 1 passion fruit at 30 pg 70 vg makes a really nice mild vape once it's steeped. Some people don't like the sour though.