I'm about to get more serious about my mixing, partly because I am getting slightly overwhelmed by requests from friends and family, and partially because I want more freedom regarding what I'm mixing. (I have been purchasing premixed base from ecigexpress)
I have an awesome scale, a large, clean area to mix, and plenty of storage. I've been using the ever popular shoebox sized tupperware method of containing all my flavors and I'm looking for a better way.
Would you guys share pictures of what your mixing areas and setups look like?
I apologize if this has been asked before, I looked and couldn't find any examples of what a good mixing area looks like and what you guys find the most useful (beyond scales obviously).
Not mine. It's at home and I'm at the office. But what it looks like now is less important than what I wish it looked like anyway. This one makes me drool: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY_eJuice/comments/54mnoj/the_lab_before_after/
That lab's got nothin' on my coffee table! ><
Lordy jesus that's sexy. Doors close and you'd never even know what's inside. Nice.
I'm a huge fan of not having all sorts of shit laying around. Love the idea of a self contained space. I thought I was going to be living the good life with a nail polish rack to hold my flavors......
As a side note - just wanna throw some love your way for the recipes you have up on ATF. I've done a lot of reading and research about mixing and I have read a ton of really good information from you specifically. Not trying to lick anyone's nuts but you and a few others have really helped me get over the anxiety of worrying about messing something up. Working on my own thing now for my own taste buds. But yeah, thanks for the stuff you've done.
Here's a more recent pic if anyone is curious
I know this is an old post but... what racks did you use to hold all your flavorings on the doors?
This or one of the many others. I got two of them from Amazon and two from eBay. That one is pretty close to what I remember paying :)
I have a shelf with a few concentrates, my pg and vg, and my nic. I keep a 30ml syringe, a scale, and a 200ml beaker. I usually only buy a few concentrates at a time. I have gotten pretty damn lazy about it lately. Recipes are mainly just loose guides for me these days, if I use them at all. My general rules of thumb is to make 200ml of juice. Never exceed 21g of flavor, and always do 6ml of nic. Then I usually just mix pg/vg to something like 50/50 or 40/50 depending on how I feel (9 times out of 10 I just do a 50/50 mix). I always do a 15 minute boil (using a double boiler) on my juices so I can immediately vape them. I never steep, because I'm lazy and I don't really care anymore lol.
I'm not all super precise anymore because I'm not trying to duplicate/sell anything. It's just for me. I started vaping to save money. Buying juice from anywhere is wasteful to me. Making juice in bulk is the best way, imho. That way I don't have to think about it for a while.
If you -really- want to see my setup, I'll snap some pics when I get home from work. It really isn't that interesting, though.
Here's my setup. Again, not much to see.
Is that a mixing board at your mixing station? Cuz if so that is hilarious!
Instead of buying nail polish racks off Amazon, I ended up building my own custom storage rack to fit the space I was using as a dedicated mixing station: https://imgur.com/RbhaRtu
That's really nice. How do you have them organized? I've seen a few people mention that they organize by vendor and others by flavor.
My current setup PC, printer, and container for bottles at the bottom. Scale and a Dymo 450 label printer under the monitor. Curtains are blackout. Cost for the table, shelf, and storage containers was about $160 total and were bought as I expanded, so it wasn't a big one-time investment or anything like that.
My setup an old corner desk I've had for 20 years.
You really mix on that tiny scale? Not bagging on it but it's comically small compared to the bottle on top of it. I like the light up there, I struggle to find any good lighting at all in my apartment, the architect was probably blind.
Nice stash of bottles too. I am currently completely out and am awaiting replenishment. Never enough bottles....
I wish I had a better spot honestly but this is what I have now. I use a Raspberry Pi to have a dedicated mixing computer and the monitor mount was surprisingly cheap.
Those syringes have individual dedicated flavors?
Yeah from back when I mixed by volume. I still have a lot of bottles without dropper caps so I still use them on occasion. I've been slowly replacing all my flavors to dropper bottles for mixing by weight. I'll usually replace a syringe after about a month.
I wouldn't really call this a setup or anything, but this is where i keep my concentrates. https://imgur.com/M1WWmHz From left to right, the first 3 blue baskets are organized by vendor. CAP > TFA > FA. The fourth one is a mix of INW, FLV, a little FW and BH (Bolsjehuset, a danish company) and some MB. The makeup thingy is mainly additives, vanillas and some other stuff. And then under my bed i keep my 5L jugs of PG and VG.
There are many, many posts already about storage and organizing your gear.
Some people have dedicated mixing areas, some people put there stuff away and bring it out when needed.
Any chance I could see yours?
I can't recall ever seeing /u/EdibleMalfunction's post anything other than a variation on what he just said, whenever these posts come up.
Maybe it's harder to ignore than to contribute absolutely nothing? Isn't that completely paradoxical? I dunno, that shit to me is like water on a duck's back, slides right off and I move on.
Your setup is super nice. This may be a tacky question but how in the world did you get all of those extracts and flavors? That must've taken some time to acquire.
I don’t have a picture of it on my phone, but this is what I have going on...I’ll try to paint you a picture with words.
I happened upon a small wooden rolling cart. Think something like a tiny desk. I coated the entire surface with Rustoleum Never Wet. On top sits two plastic nail polish organizers (you can find them on Amazon. I highly recommend them) along with the scale. The desk organizers contain TFA, INW, CAP, LB and PUR flavors.
The bottom shelf contains my pipettes, nicotine, PG and VG.
I also have a separate plastic storage bin with three drawers where RF, FA, and FW flavors go.
It’s pretty handy because I can just wheel the cart out of the closet and wherever I want to mix in the house.
I like the idea of a cart. I don't think I'd have the closet space to stow it when I'm not using it tho.
Question about pipettes - I know this has probably been covered multiple times - do you use them when you're mixing up a large amount because there is no dripper on the bottle? I almost ordered some but I have no idea what I would use them for since I'm still in the 10ml/30ml size bottle of flavor stage.
Also sorry about the testy remark in reply to apexified. I lurk in this sub and have been for the last few months and have never really seen a post specifically about storage and mixing spaces. I just needed some inspiration and thought borrowing an idea or two would work.
I know you have some great recipes that you've shared and appreciate your contributions, even this one.