OK, so now you have the basic idea, here is how to execute it.
First of all, use the 100 mg/mL stuff. PG and VG have dissolved oxygen. The more dilute the nicotine, the less the shelf life. I also suggest you use only PG base, it should be a little moe stable than VG or PG/VG.
Work with gloves of course, safety glasses, an apron is advisable, and do this outside.
Here is a ghetto rig to prevent tipping bottles over. Take a plastic 2 liter soda bottle and cut of the top part, leaving plenty of height on the bottom. You put your glass bottle in this, with the cap on of course, then pour clean cat litter around the bottle. Wipe of any dust before you uncap. Now you have a secured bottle to work with.
You want to keep the lip clean - it is nicotine - plus you want a good seal. So get a plastic funnel, then cut most of the tip off so it is not sticking way down into the bottle, just enough to keep it from the bottle lip. You don't want to fill to the top either, because you will have a mess then.
You have two options
1) Fill pretty close to the top to minimize the airspace, but not so full that the liquid is in the neck. Just below that. Then cap firmly, don't break it but tight. Get a roll of plumbers tape and after the bottle is capped, wrap a bunch of it around the cap and neck to seal it better. Then store.
2) If you are more resourceful, you can do even better by blanketing the nic base with an inert gas. This is a little tricky, but doable.
You need the wider heavier plumbers tape. Cut a square big enough to cover the bottle but not so big that the excess will interfere with the cap threading on tight. Leave a little more headspace if you use this method. Fill to a little below the neck. Once you have filled, stretch the square of plumbers tape over the bottle. You may want to do them all, just be sure to set them aside and not to knock them over.
Now it gets tricky. Inert gas: Argon is best because it is heavier, but not so commonly available as helium, which is readily available in the form of party balloons. The rubber kind not the Mylar ones. You have to get this onto a syringe. A 14 gauge blunt like you use for mixing is fine, it does not have to be sharp. This is the tricky part, you need a bunch of rubber bands to get enough of a seal of the balloon neck around the syringe body. Of course you let a little helium out then twist the balloon to keep the rest in while you work the balloon neck onto a syringe.
Takes some manual dexterity, but it is doable. Once you can untwist the balloon a little and feel flow out of the needle you are ready to roll.
Push the needle gently through the plumbers tape. It will not seal, but you don't want it to. But don't rip a big hole either. DON'T put the needle into the liquid. Untwist the balloon just enough to get some definite steady flow, don't blow liquid out, and don't blow the tape up from around the bottle neck where you stretched it down. Just enough so have you have some flow and the hole in the tape where the needle lets the helium in is also the vent that lets the air/helium back out.
Blow helium into the bottle. Gas will come back up around the needle since the plumbers tape will not really seal the hole. That's OK. It is hard to know how much, you just kinda guess from how much the balloon shrinks, but you want to blow a good times the volume of headspace in the bottle. At least 5, more like 10 times the volume. The idea is get a good steady flow of helium going in, gas will push back out around the hole where the syringe is, and if you do this enough, you will mostly displace the air with helium.
You are not gonna get all the air out without special equipment and training. This is a strictly ghetto operation. You can get a substantial amount of the air out though and that will greatly increase your shelf life. Once you had a good steady flow of helium going for a while, get ready to cap. You leave the tape on, have the cap ready, pull the needle out and cap it tight immediately. Then wrap the top and neck with a lot of plumbers tape as described before.
You now have nic in good bottles with some air but a lot of it displaced by inert gas which is best for long term storage. I would not worry about doing this for your little working bottles, just the 480 mLs which may be around for a long time.
So that's it! It is not that hard to do the gas, but if you don't wanna mess with it, the most important thing is dark glass bottles, the cap type - PTFE, a *safe* low temp (freezer if possible but fridge is OK) place where your bottles will not get broken and are not accessible to kids.
First of all, use the 100 mg/mL stuff. PG and VG have dissolved oxygen. The more dilute the nicotine, the less the shelf life. I also suggest you use only PG base, it should be a little moe stable than VG or PG/VG.
Work with gloves of course, safety glasses, an apron is advisable, and do this outside.
Here is a ghetto rig to prevent tipping bottles over. Take a plastic 2 liter soda bottle and cut of the top part, leaving plenty of height on the bottom. You put your glass bottle in this, with the cap on of course, then pour clean cat litter around the bottle. Wipe of any dust before you uncap. Now you have a secured bottle to work with.
You want to keep the lip clean - it is nicotine - plus you want a good seal. So get a plastic funnel, then cut most of the tip off so it is not sticking way down into the bottle, just enough to keep it from the bottle lip. You don't want to fill to the top either, because you will have a mess then.
You have two options
1) Fill pretty close to the top to minimize the airspace, but not so full that the liquid is in the neck. Just below that. Then cap firmly, don't break it but tight. Get a roll of plumbers tape and after the bottle is capped, wrap a bunch of it around the cap and neck to seal it better. Then store.
2) If you are more resourceful, you can do even better by blanketing the nic base with an inert gas. This is a little tricky, but doable.
You need the wider heavier plumbers tape. Cut a square big enough to cover the bottle but not so big that the excess will interfere with the cap threading on tight. Leave a little more headspace if you use this method. Fill to a little below the neck. Once you have filled, stretch the square of plumbers tape over the bottle. You may want to do them all, just be sure to set them aside and not to knock them over.
Now it gets tricky. Inert gas: Argon is best because it is heavier, but not so commonly available as helium, which is readily available in the form of party balloons. The rubber kind not the Mylar ones. You have to get this onto a syringe. A 14 gauge blunt like you use for mixing is fine, it does not have to be sharp. This is the tricky part, you need a bunch of rubber bands to get enough of a seal of the balloon neck around the syringe body. Of course you let a little helium out then twist the balloon to keep the rest in while you work the balloon neck onto a syringe.
Takes some manual dexterity, but it is doable. Once you can untwist the balloon a little and feel flow out of the needle you are ready to roll.
Push the needle gently through the plumbers tape. It will not seal, but you don't want it to. But don't rip a big hole either. DON'T put the needle into the liquid. Untwist the balloon just enough to get some definite steady flow, don't blow liquid out, and don't blow the tape up from around the bottle neck where you stretched it down. Just enough so have you have some flow and the hole in the tape where the needle lets the helium in is also the vent that lets the air/helium back out.
Blow helium into the bottle. Gas will come back up around the needle since the plumbers tape will not really seal the hole. That's OK. It is hard to know how much, you just kinda guess from how much the balloon shrinks, but you want to blow a good times the volume of headspace in the bottle. At least 5, more like 10 times the volume. The idea is get a good steady flow of helium going in, gas will push back out around the hole where the syringe is, and if you do this enough, you will mostly displace the air with helium.
You are not gonna get all the air out without special equipment and training. This is a strictly ghetto operation. You can get a substantial amount of the air out though and that will greatly increase your shelf life. Once you had a good steady flow of helium going for a while, get ready to cap. You leave the tape on, have the cap ready, pull the needle out and cap it tight immediately. Then wrap the top and neck with a lot of plumbers tape as described before.
You now have nic in good bottles with some air but a lot of it displaced by inert gas which is best for long term storage. I would not worry about doing this for your little working bottles, just the 480 mLs which may be around for a long time.
So that's it! It is not that hard to do the gas, but if you don't wanna mess with it, the most important thing is dark glass bottles, the cap type - PTFE, a *safe* low temp (freezer if possible but fridge is OK) place where your bottles will not get broken and are not accessible to kids.
