I can't believe I mixed by volume for 6 years. I wasted so much time washing syringes and beakers.
If there are any beginners, or anyone else who still does that, I'd HIGHLY recommend buying a scale and switching to weight.
I assume most people here already know this, so here's something people might not know. There are little mini funnels that will fit in the neck of even small bottles. They make it nearly impossible to miss and waste your flavors or nicotine. The one I have is one of the most useful tools I own. Check it out.
Only issue I had with those little funnels is I'd have to take them out because the VG is too thiccc.
Honestly just a steady hand and good pour tips is all you need to get juice into those tiny 30ml unicorn holes
I pour my 1 gal of VG into 30ml* glass bottles. I agree you just need to aim the stream.
Mp? You mean ml? If so, you're a bad ass!
Sorry I did mean ml. I'm running off no sleep with a light thc buzz so I'm getting sloppy with comments.
The main thing to worry about is the height of the pouring container over the receptacle. VG is just viscous enough to be able to predict where it'll land in real time. That combined with an extremely slow tilt can get you some pretty tiny streams even if the mouth of the gallon is huge.
I felt the same way and imagine I was a vendor at some point. $10 scale was worth it's weight in gold. The hours I wasted.... good on you man!
What scale did you get?
Usually if you get a 0.01g scale it's gonna be accurate enough for mixing DIY. Just make sure the maximum weight is enough for how much you want to mix, accounting for the recipient weight as well. Some of these scales are only good for 50g (good for weighing weed) while others go to 500g (which I would recommend for mixing ejuice). Oh and make sure it's got an option to disable auto turn-off, that's so annoying to lose the current number because you were taking your time.
I couldn't agree more about mixing by weight - it's significantly easier. I still use the syringes though because it's easier to aim & control the flow to narrow-necked containers (the worst thing about chubby bottles).
I mix 500 ml batches in old spag bol jars then transfer to chubbies (home refill) & unicorns (travel refill) with syringes. 4 shots from a 30 ml syringe to refill a 120 ml chubby.
Buying & mixing in bulk makes it dirt cheap & really easy for my lazy arse. About $10 (AUD) per jar. I mix 1-2 jars every 4-6 weeks. It takes 1-2 hours & keeps the house & cars looking like a 70's disco & smelling like a bakery.
E: adjusted mix rates for reality.
Someone asked about a good scale. I have the AWS LB-501, which was recommended to me on the DIY_eJuice discord. They are very robust and do not have the annoying auto-off program, that a lot of cheaper scales have (they switch off after a few seconds of inactivity). It’s a great scale that I can honestly recommend.
> AWS LB-501
I bought this same scale, also based on Wayne's suggestion at DIYorDie. Got it on Amazon, at the time it was 25$. Worth its weight in gold. No more rinsing syringes, blunt tips, etc. I use 240ml condiment squirt bottles for my PG/VG and a smaller 50ml bottle for the nicotine. This has completely changed how I feel about experimenting with mixing. I can throw together a mix, after research, in a matter of minutes with virtually no clean up.
I’d also recommend condiment bottles for pg/vg
Dude, here's a next level trick for you:
Use chubby gorrilla 120ml bottles for your bases. A stubby 30ml for your nic (or a really small hole in a condiment bottle tip) works well for nic too. Seriously. I use 30ml boston round style HDPE bottles, the ones with the tiny necks smaller even than the old school 30ml unicorns (those tall skinny SOBs) and rarely ever have a issue. And I meam I use them almost exclusively. Occasionally I'll mix up a 120ml of GIGI or something else I love (Monkey Nuts, for example) but every recipe under development gets done in 30ml first.
I have a question. I've been thinking about switching to mixing my own Juice but I'm on a tight budget of $60 per month preferably $30 per month.
I'm getting a couple decent devices (Pod AIO's) Caliburn & Grimm AIO next month and some replacement coils/pods which will run me about:
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$10 for the Caliburn's Replacement pods (each lasts a month) pack of 4.
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Caliburn Kit is $20 with 2 pods, charger, device and Manuel. I feel like I'm forgetting something in the kit.
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And if I buy pre-made E-Juice (Nic Salts) It will cost about $9-13 per 30ml bottle of 50mg NicSalt E-Juice and I'll need 3.
I'm an MTL Vaper who prefers Nic Salts and a tight draw. What is the best kit to get started making 50mg Nic Salts at home to save t9ns of money on E-Juice?
I've done DIY for about 7 years and it costs me about $5/month and that's overestimating. There's an initial cost and the rare resupply which is very cheap.
How much does it cost to startup and how difficult is it?
Is 8t easy to make nic salts?
No kit. Buy separately.
Get 100mg/ml in 50/50 base, or 250mg/ml in PG base (if you have lab experience and can treat that shit appropriately. A drop on your gloves won't kill you like some shit in the lab can, but it still isn't something to play with. If you know you are going to be careful enough not to spill any, this would be my choice). Then you need some VG, and flavors, and PG/PG alternative (if you get the 250mg/ml ). Oh, and a scale and bottles. It's gonna be a serious up front cost. More than your monthly budget for vaping. But once you have everything, you don't pay for juice for at least three months, if not a year. (If you get a 60ml bottle of 250mg/ml nic base, that's 10 30ml bottles of 50mg/ml you can make. A 100ml bottle of that base will make a half liter of juice. 250ml of it will make 1.25l of finished juice. At your predicted consumption of 3ml/day, that's well over a year. But inside 6 months you may be ready to go to a high power device and cut back to 6mg/ml. Note that 20ml of juice per day with that is slightly less nic than the 150mg of nic per day than you currently would use. And consider nic is far and away the most expensive ingredient we use.
Yea I've had something like upwards of 60mg all over my fingers and has never phased me. Usually around 30. Originally purchased nitrile gloves many years ago and never used them for mixing my own.
> 60mg all over my fingers and has never phased me
Yeah, but parent comment is suggesting 250mg concentrate, which is a whole different story (can cause serious skin irritation, unlike 100mg and below.)
100mg nicotine concentrate is the DIY standard for a reason. Anything more concentrated than 100mg/ml (10%) is classified as HazMat, and requires professional safety precautions.
Imagine dumping a large amount of nicotine on your arm and going to wash it off within the 5m time limit only to find out your water is shut off. You go into the other room and its off too. So the kitchen, bathroom and outside hose is not working. Guess its time to ask a neighbor to use their hose/sink immediately or call Poison Control. This has happened to someone I heard of. He ended up in the ER and only got hives and rashes because he made it to the ER in time and got a shot of something.
I've spilt 18mg/ml and got sick AF but I was fine. I've talked with poison control before and they stated if its on your hands for more than 5m you need to get medical attention.
>Yea I've had something like upwards of 60mg all over my fingers and has never phased me. Usually around 30. Originally purchased nitrile gloves many years ago and never used them for mixing my own.
Terrible advice and shame on you. Maybe you're mixing w/ 20-30-40-50 or 60% nic, but even then you want to avoid getting that on your skin. Seriously shitty comment.
> or 250mg/ml in PG base (if you have lab experience and can treat that shit appropriately
Big emphasis on the if here. 100mg nicotine concentrate is the DIY standard for a reason. Anything more concentrated than 100mg/ml (10%) is classified as HazMat, and requires professional safety precautions.
Yeah. Thought I made that clear. The response made me wonder, I really doubt 250mg/ml would be appropriate for many. Some of us. I mean, hell, if I was using 250? I would be getting out the gloves to work with that shit. And wearing eye protection. Because even though I trust that I'd be careful enough not to spill it, equipment failure can happen. And that shit isn't something I want to worry about. I mean, I don't normally have a wash station in the room where I mix. If I was in a proper lab? Well, lab protocol would be my guide...so gloves, lab smock, possibly eyewear, and mixing under a fume hood. Or at least measuring the nic out there, and adding VG to dilute it.
For your first purchase buy one or two 120ml 100mg/ml VG and one 120ml 100mg/ml PG salt nic, one gallon of VG, 250ml PG, ~10-15 flavors, gorilla bottles if you don't have them, this will be $70-100. 120ml 100mg nicotine bases are the easiest to store and handle. If you catch a scale on sale for $7-10, throw it in the basket. Some vendors carry AIOs or pods, you might catch a sale. Don't forget to use a coupon code, mostly all nic vendors have them.
That's pretty much it.
Your commercial e-juice costs 36 cents/ml
Your diy e-juice initial investment is around 20cents/ml but its cost is really around 5 cents/ml the rest is extra supplies that will last for a long time, all this assuming a large margin for splurging.
In 2-3 months on your second order expect stock up nicotine and flavors for another $70-100 because you'll know what you need and the next vapeageddon cycle is upon us anyway.
At this point you will have enough e-juice for 1-5 years.
Next year when you'll be vaping only 30mg or less you'll realize that you actually have stretched your supplies for another 1-3 years, your e-juice is around 3 cents/ml and you will be waiting to run out of something to make an order for the fun of it.
Sounds awesome. I am on a tight budget though. Most I could spend a month is $50-$60.
This month I'm getting a Caliburn kit with liquid made specifically for it. They say with it most people are getting a 3weeks to a month per pod. The kit includes 6 pods, Caliburn, 2x 30ml and 1x 15ml Nic Salts for $60 just to have something before I save for DIY juice mixing.
If I had enough to get the Caliburn with all the stuff I need for it and DIY E-Juice supplies and ingredients I'd be doing it next month.
But when I make my own juice I'm wanting to make zero sweetener juice with natural sweet flavors. I love Mango, Cherry, Strawberry, Cheesecake, Blueberry, and Sour Apple the most.
My only problem is the funnels form a seal and nothing moves, especially with vg, I use a beaker, and all of my pg ingredients go in first, which gets semi carefully poured into my bottle, then the vg which I can get a nice steady stream that rarely misses or clogs the tiny hole.
But yeah, I think I did a year of volumetric, grabbed a cheap scale off amazon and I don't plan on going back.
Honestly I usually just eyeball the nic/vg/pg at this point.
I just count how many drops i put in for the flavors, its usually ~20 drops per ml.
> I usually just eyeball the nic
Please don't. Never forget that concentrated nicotine is a deadly poison; treat it with respect and measure with precision.
Ok, maybe it isn't a 100% eyeball since I usually use a cap as a measuring reference.
But yes, I do generally agree that nic is the only thing that really shouldn't be eyeballed.
I keep a liter bottle of (precisely mixed) unflavored juice around, and use that when mixing flavor samples.
I also count drops of flavor when mixing 5ml or smaller exploratory samples...but when it comes time to refine a recipe, I mix 10ml samples using a scale for precision.