I currently have a barebones set up of
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Scale
bottles
10 flavors
pipettes
100mg nic in pg(tried vg and as much as like 100% vg it's just a pain) VG and PG in bottles with fliptop spout lids.
coilmaster toolkit+jig, wire and cotton sheets
I'm kind of on the fence about my pg/vg bottles. if you don't retighten them they leak and you have to swing them upsde down fast or the PG runs down the side. I've seen it mentioned before to get a glass syringe but if you vape like I do you buy deep bottles. I'm also not sold on american trends scales. the one I have has recently started reading .04-.09 with nothing on it, even after taring multiple times
Rolls of hockey tape, and sharpies. Great labelling system.
Do you have a fan/air moving in the room where you mix? Have you tried calibration it? I assume you meant American Weigh Scales.
Yorker style condiment caps for bottles you have VG and PG in. Or the wonderful ones from Liquid Barn, the ones with the Twist caps.
Paper towels
Bottles. And bottles. And bottles. 10ml or 15ml, 30, 60. More bottles than you think you'll use.
Avery address labels and their design software for pretty labels. Want even nicer ones? NEAT Glossy sticker sheets from Amazon.
Baby wipes. Great for cleaning up any spills of VG or flavourings. Just keep away from your bottle tips as they often have lanolin.
this right here. fuck cleaning up VG
Having a bottle of premix base is an overlooked, but really easy, time saver. I use a 1qt bottle measured to 80% VG, 20% PG for my mixing. Obviously if you're in the max VG crowd this won't save you much time.
Regarding your scale, do you have a fan on?
I just started mixing and I have to say that I don't see the value of premix base at all. Your flavors are going to throw off that 80/20 ratio anyway, and it has been zero effort for me to just add them separately. What is the benefit of premix besides saving the 2 seconds it takes me to tare the scale and pick up the other bottle?
it's a cumulative benefit. It doesn't really save you any time when you consider mixing 1 bottle, but when you're mixing a dozen testers and a few bottles for the week all in one sit down it is a meaningful savings of time.
I preset at 80/20 acknowledging that it will be thrown off somewhat, but since my mixes by and large sit between 6 and 12% flavoring, my end result should sit somewhere in the 70% VG range.
Ah okay well that makes sense. Now that I re-read my own comment I think I might have come off as a jerk (really not my intent!) Personally (Again, I'm very new to this), I think that I would benefit more from this if I was making a dozen of the exact same recipe, so I could just consider the premix in my calculations. For bottle-to-bottle creation, I think I prefer just to mix separate just to make sure I'm always hitting my desires recipe levels.
Oh, and assuming anyone is reading this far, here's my newbie-protip I discovered- Nic-salts are amazing and open a world of possibilities. Everyone knows that PG is a much better flavor carrier, but it comes with a throat-hit. By using nic-salts you can up your PG levels to bring that ever so sweet flavor, while reserving your throat hit for your PG levels. I am very impressed with my "smooth" nic-salts from Nicotine River so far.
I do totally agree with the base mix. Close enough to desired percentage is fine for most everything until refining. I used to measure out pg and vg , but then discovered I like max vg for everything including time savings. None of my recipes are the same ratio, but they all vape very similarly(I do add between 2% and 5% ro water).
A rice pad. Heat it up in the microwave and wrap it around a fresh mix for ~5 minutes. It helps thin out the VG so you can mix it better. I know some people do this with warm water, but I find it more convenient to use the rice pad.
If you like small recipe testers (like 3 or 5ml), a 21/22 gauge needle will fit down the dripper of your flavour concentrates and a 0.5ml syringe gives really small increments. You can accurately make small batches.
It is not worth the time to use this method for a batch larger than 5ml because the needle is slow at pg viscosity. I use this only for multiple percentage single flavour testing and development of recipes that are really new to me and I want to make multiple variations for initial testing.
American weigh scales has a good warranty. Mine(LB-501) has been rock solid for 2 years. If you're having any issue with it, reach out to them. I've given a couple as gifts and everyone has been loving theirs, literally the best scale I've used that wasn't in a lab.
What model aws did you get? Is there any moving air?(mine will sometimes register my breath)
Pre-mix you VG/PG to what ratio you like, and your Nic percentages. If you are using PG based concentrate flavour make sure you account for that then just make a note on the bottle of the ratio, Nic percentage and need percentage of the PG based concentrate flavour to mix into it, ie. 20%.
This way you could have a few pre-made mixes like 55/45 at 3.6% Nic and a 70/30 1.8% Nic. I like the higher Nic in the day to stealth vape on a pod and the weaker Nic at night on my more powerful MTL tank.
Also having it pre-made makes it really easy to mess around playing with new flavours. Got an idea for a new one? Make up 2ml and add 8ml of your pre-mix.
Having my VG and PG in squeezy bottles with nozzle tops just saves me so much time and hassle. Makes the process much cleaner, faster, and easier. I have about 90 disposable pipettes and syringes in a cupboard now that'll never be used.
Also I'll second that you can never really have too many bottles for your juice, of all sizes. 30ml and 100ml I find particularly useful.
Laboratory wash bottle for PG. Someone on here recommended it as an alternative to a condiment bottle.
I know this wasn't asked, this is how I do it-
I mix everything directly into the bottle I'll be using (sitting on a scale). The first thing I add is the flavors. I drop in the amount(s) and move to the next step. Next is PG from a condiment bottle. Then I add the nic. My mixing nicotine is in a PET dropper bottle. It's similar to the one ounce (rebottled) flavors come in. Adding nicotine just like I would a flavor is super convenient. Before adding VG I agitate the solution, a sort of pre-mix before the VG. Lastly I top off the mix with VG, from another condiment bottle. A lot of times I won't fill it up all the way. I'll go up until the bottle is about 4/5 full and agitate it thoroughly. When the remainder of VG is added I shake it again.
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For testing flavors I use 10ml bottles. Pre-mixed VG/PG is handy for those. Trying to be precise in such little bottles isn't really worth it to me. I try to measure the flavors and nic precisely but the end ratio is close enough for me.
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I drop everything into the bottles because I have a steady hand and accurate vision. If I had shaky hands or some other condition, I'd probably use another method. The way I do it works for me and that's what matters. I cant be bothered to use beakers, pipettes, syringes, heat or stirrers.
I use mason jars for 400-800ml batches of juice for my friends. its easier to mix one big jar, let it steep for a week or so, then dispense it to each bottle. Easier than making it one bottle at a time.
I use a 30ml turkey baster to dispense into the bottles. Works pretty well.
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I use one of these to pour my VG when I do the bigger batches.
Organizing your flavor storage container.
After I broke 200 flavors this became a must for me.
If you're not already sorting all of yours by category type where each type has it's own container, start immediately. You'll thank yourself later.
Beakers.
I usually mix about 1.5L of my favorite DIY at a time, and I put it into 250ml bottles, so to save time I just put my flavor concentrates into beakers and syringe it from there. I mix by volume.