Every time since I started mixing by weight, I've been amazed at how effective it is. It's much much less messy, and insanely quicker than doing it by measuring by mililiters or drops.
Previously I had to pull myself together to make a batch of this or that, now I remembered I should make a batch of my GVC-II and -boom- 3 minutes later it's on my steeping shelf!
If you have been considering trying it, you should do it! Get a cheap precision scale (0.01g precision, the "biggest" you can find 500g or more for bigger batches). You will definitely not regret it!
If you're using e-liquid-recipes.com, go to your profile and specify that you want weight instead of drops!
Happy vaping guys!
EDIT: It's faster if you have your base premixed, as I have. I have a 1 liter container with ~14 mg (at 10% flavor) base (60/40). Then you just have to mix in your flavors and top it off with your base.
would you mind explaining the whole weight thing,i have been diy ing for a while and hear talk of weight and how easy it is so maybe its worth the infestment
Happily - The process is incredibly simple.
- Take out your scale and ingredients
- Place your container on the scale and turn it on (that way the weight will show 0)
- Pour in an ingredient (slowly) until the desired weight is reached
- Press "Tare" - that will reset the scale back to 0 and repeat step 3 until all ingredients are in
That's it! It's so easy and simple it's ridiculous :)
The thing you're calling a weight is a scale - weights are what you put on it!
Otherwise spot on. Another important tip is to calibrate your scale; even the cheap digital ones on Amazon are fairly accurate, but calibration can be the difference between +/-0.1 and +/-0.02 - in small test batches that can be very important.
[ed] In a pinch, a standard US nickel (5 cent piece) in good shape is 5 grams +/-0.1. Stack nickels until they match your calibration weight, and you should have a pretty accurate measure. See this guide (good god I just linked eHow.. sorry) for more info and tips.
sounds great but all my mixes are percents,how do you transfer to weights?
Well the percentages must be translated to something, right? You don't just add 1.5% Juicy Peach, the 1.5% must translate to either some amount of drops or ml - drops are useless (more or less) but ml can easily be grams instead.
If you're interested, make a user on e-liquid-recipes.com, and set your preference to grams, then check out a few recipes, to see what I mean :)
Do you have a link to the scale you use?
I use this one - though I think you can find a similar one at the same price on Amazon - Get one that is accurate to 0.01 g!
I got this scale, recommended by another redditor. It has 0.01 gram accuracy, updates the display quickly, comes with calibration weights, and has a long auto-off timeout (5-10 minutes instead of 10-20 seconds like some cheaper scales), so it doesn't shut off while you're working, which can be really frustrating.
Mine was $18.50, but I managed to snag a refurbished unit.
These threads never have a good answer to this question :) I'd really like to be pointed to a fairly-inexpensive 'professional' scale myself.
In the meantime, the cheap American Weigh scales on Amazon are pretty great: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=american%20weigh%20digital%20scale
I do this and have never looked back - One thing I'd like to add is that PG is 1.04g/ml and VG is 1.24g/ml (distilled water is 1 g/ml.) I estimate 1.1 for PG based flavors
I use 80% base, some percentage flavor, and top with PG, so for example 10ml with 10% flavor, that's 8.32g base, 1.1g flavor and 1.04g PG
Altogether it takes about 5 minutes including taking out the ingredients and putting them away. If I'm feeling lazy, I'll just to 8+1+1. Squeeze bottles are great for base and PG/VG
For pg based nic, would you use the 1.1g of pg flavoring?
I actually make a base that I use as 80% of the finished product, then measure out 10ml and weigh it to figure out the density.
Got my scale today and plan in going to the weigh method. I don't mix as much as I should because I hate the cleanup.
So you don't go over 10% flavoring since your base is made that way?
I've been meaning to make a base for a long time but was always confused.
I want my end result to be 60vg 4mg nic. What should I make my base?
Oh yes, the cleanup was the main reason I had to pull myself together each time. Now there is practically none!
The thing to remember about the base is, at those levels a little variation doesn't matter much. I have a few mixes that is under 10% and some (probably most) a bit over 10% - If I use less than 10% it will be a tiny bit stronger, and if I use more, it will be a bit weaker, nic-wize - I don't mind. If I use 20% instead of 10% flavor, my liquid is going to be 12.6 mg instead of 14mg :) If I use 5% it will be 14.7 mg.
If you want to make a base, go to e-liquid-recipes.com - create a new recipe, add a flavor and call it "Flavoring" or something and set it to what you believe your average flavoring to be. Then plot in the rest, desired PG, VG, target stregth, nic strength, then just follow your recipe, but don't add the "Flavoring" :)
My example with the 10% flavoring base at 4 mg would mean if you used 5% your strength would be 4.2 mg and at 20% would be 3.6 mg - it's a small variation :)
Any vids out there on this topic? Been wanting to try it but want to see how it works. Tried a few searches on YouTube and didn't get any results
I haven't stumbled over any, but it really is as simple as I wrote previously :)
Yep. No mess. Only problem is measuring stuff that's less than .05g because my crappy ebay scale doesn't always recognize it. But I don't mind since I'm not too accurate anyways.
All the info you need is on the first post here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/1ykun5/request_guide_to_mixing_by_weight/