I got my first batch of 6 FA flavours the other day and am currently vaping my first 10.5ml batch of DIY liquid: 6.00ml VG, 4.00ml PG, 0.5ml FA Vanilla Tahiti.
One thing I've noticed along the way that might be helpful for people is that, working as a scientist, I am reasonably equipped for this adventure [have a balance, pipettor, etc], but still find it much easier & more convenient to use lab-grade Falcon tubes for measurement (by percentage), despite their small loss of precision. You can mix, measure, and shake in the same tube, more or less, then rinse it with water or etoh to clean, dry it, and reuse. They're not too expensive, and come in 15ml and 50ml, which I've found pretty useful. Nab a couple from a science-y friend or order a small bag of each and you're set for life.
Cheers, and thanks for all the great information that helped get me started.
Fixed the formatting for you.
VG - 57.142857143%
PG - 38.095238095%
Vanilla Tahiti (FA) - 4.761904762%
I'll stick with scales thanks.
You can mix, measure and shake directly into a bottle too.
For sure - but bottles don't have 0.5ml (or similar!) markings, making it harder. I thought about it and concluded that any other way, I'd either end up using pipets or tips for a pipettor. I just poured to the right marking from smaller bottles of PG and VG stock, then dripped flavour in from a needle tip bottle, capped it, shook, then transfer to glass dropper bottle. I'm just saying it'd be helpful if you're looking to minimize material use. :)
A small scale that measures in 0.01g increments. Just pour your flavourings, PG, VG and nicotine directly into the bottle and shake. Good info in the sidebar.
I also work as a scientist. It's awesome being able to use/steal things from your bench. I always want to mix there but that would be highly innappropriate. I still mix by weight. The graduations on falcon/fuge tubes are also very innaccurate. You need class a pippettes to get the acceptable accuracy. God what I would give for a couple eppendorfs for my wizardlabs test tubes....
Haha. I feel the same way! I don't want to bother using pipettes at all. Too many months of solution transfers. Probably feels like fun to people who don't do it for work.
Inaccuracy: yup, definitely. I expect -/+ 5% when doing it this way, but I'm not too concerned about it. In reality, it doesn't matter for small enough batches. Conversely, I'm used to mixing "real-world use" resins and other solns by weight, because inaccuracy there is costly in a number of ways. Using Falcons/fuges I can mix up a quick batch of liquid in my kitchen in 2 minutes without a real recipe. Half of science is experimentation anyway, you know? :)
Yea totally! My experiments have been offputting thus far. Mostly the tobaccos. The research going on here is great. So I guess I'm more of a cookbook chemist with my diy stuff. Cloning everything I can find. Good luck! And I'm grabbing some falcons from work to try it out. Btw its awesome you call them falcon tubes..I do too... everyone looked at me funny when I called them that.