What's your favorite cartridge filler?

[Kalthia]

...mnn.nnnm

[tamiflu]

Anyone know where to get 510 blank carts cheap?

[abudman]

Hmmm, now you all got me thinking of the holy grail of wicks. Anybody tried ShamWow?

[Shadowdr]

Hmmm, now you all got me thinking of the holy grail of wicks. Anybody tried ShamWow?

Thats funny, I have been eyeballin my shop towels for a few days now.

I voted other because I have tried almost everything with mixed results. The teabags work good at first but if stored very long they seem to start biodegrading and taste bad, kinda rotten. Coffee filters work well to but they seem to add a dry taste to the juice or just change the flavor some way. The poly batting works very well but it turns hard and melts quickly after a few cart fulls and just quits working as good.

I went to Wally world last week to pick up some Brew Rite to try cleaning my attys and thought about trying some wool yarn as I heard it might work. Well they don't carry wool yarn but I did notice that the yarn they had was made of acrylic. I have read that the original cart filler was acrylic so I got a no dye lot, soft white roll for 2.00.

I tried it a few ways, first I tried several strands until I found that three was just right for a 510 cart. I simply tied one piece in the middle of another and clipped off the fourth strand. It works like the original so far, no burnt taste like the poly after just a few carts and seems to burn more liquid before topping off. So far I am getting about 6-8 drops in for a top off while the poly batting only held three or four. It is also tasteless unlike some other materials I tried.

While the strands worked fine for a long cart the knot just seemed silly on a 4081 cartridge. I put several strands together and using an old toothbrush I combed through it to see if it would separate into hairlike strands like nylon does. It did and the loose fibers work great on my N-Pro carts and can be vaped until dry. I may have to start using the 4081's again as a few prefilled carts will make it a lot less trouble then the batting. It might work good with a 510 as well but is a little labor intensive for such a large cart.

For two bucks this will last for years.

[tamiflu]

Shadow, I am having a hard time picturing this. Do you have a picture you can share?
Did you just tie 3 strands together with another pice of yarn??

[Shadowdr]

I took two peices a few inches long and tied one in the middle of the other and then clipped one off so you end up with a knot with three strands. Push the knotted end in with paper clip and cut off excess.

[edlogic]

first post for me - i am still in pre-vape mode -

been reading a lot in this forum and once i found this topic i thought of the butchers or cooking twine that i have - i think it is hemp - i got a piece of it and i notice that it unravels to very fine threads - i can hardly wait to try the twine or the teabags or the coffee filters or anything besides the crap i have been puffing for over 35 years now

i haven't received my orders yet but to make a long story short - at first i saw a few kits for over $ 100 then i saw the blu cigs ( don't ban me yet ! ) well it didn't take very long before i got wise and canceled that order ( was back ordered anyway ) and i am waiting on a fine e-smokeytreats joye 510 ( thanks to the great advice i got from this forum ) -

by the time all the stuff that i ordered gets here - i will have spent about $250 and have
6 batteries ( 4 regular 510's and 3 usb 3.7 v types )
4 attys
1 ppc
1 usb passthrough
small carry case for the 510
a couple dozen blank carts
and about 320 ml of juice ( 230ml of 36mg and 90 ml of 24mg )

( my wife is going to scream bloody murder )

but after i tell her that i have about 9 months worth of vapor and if i quit the sour leaf -then in only 2 months or so - the cost will be defrayed -

i hope she will understand

i smoke buglar roll your owns and use a little plastic filter - but i cut holes in the baffle so that it barely blocks some of the tar

it used to be bad enough when the cans were $ 12 - then we were only spending about $45 a month - but then they went to $ 32 a can - woah - now it is $ 125 a month !

i shorum glad i found this forum ' cause i'm burnin for learnin how to vape like an ape so i can stop huffing and puffing the sour leaf of grief like a monkey who's a junkie so i'll feel a bit more spunky with more money for my honey and maybe for my baby i can smell good like i should

ok now i am getting silly <- must be the euphoria rubbing off from all the smoke free-ers around here

[Melinda09]

It might be poly fill. I read somewhere from either JC or Janty that they are filled with wool. Not sure where I saw it. If I had to bet, I'd say it is wool because when it does burn a little it doesn't taste like plastic. I would think polyester would taste pretty horrible if it burned.

Anyone know for sure what they are filled with?

Hi Arizona ... Minnesota here.

I asked a similar question about wool on another thread. I wanted to know if anyone used "real" wool from sheep/lambs/whatever, since Johnson Creek refers to "wool" in their carts. I was a little confused, because some people wrote "wool" on the other thread, when it sounded like they were talking about "polyester". Terraphon replied that some people use the terms "wool" and "poly" interchangeably.

Then, Shadowdr said that he looked at Wally world for wool yarn, but ended up buying some acrylic yarn, and he's trying that now.

The Johnson Creek cart material does look and feel different to me than polyester fiber stuffing, and I thought it held fluid better than anything else that I've tried so far. I tried some poly that I had on hand after I read about how many people were using that, and thought it tasted terrible ... but that could have just been the type that I had (it had that silky feel like someone else had mentioned).

I got a few boxes of blank cartridges from Johnson Creek when they had them on sale recently, and I sacrificed one in the name of science today. There are tests that are easy to do to tell if a fiber is wool, acrylic, polyester, etc., and what the basic properties are when you burn them. I was unable to post the URL because I haven't made 15 posts yet, but if anyone's interested in a more comprehensive list (and wants to sacrifice any more cart material) I got the info. from the carpet industry after searching "fiber identification", but it's all the same fiber that we're discussing.

Here's a quick copy/paste about identifying the fibers that we're mainly talking about:

Wool
The test of wool is very easy. If it is wet, it smells like a wet dog. There is another test namely the burn test. For this test use a butane lighter to melt or ignite an unknown fiber. This will help you in the determination of its types. Butane lighter avoids masking the odor of the burning fiber. Burned wool smells like burned hair. Moreover wool dissolves in undiluted chlorine bleach.

Acrylic
If the fiber is acrylic it will melt and shrink as soon as the flame comes into its proximity. The fiber burns with lot of smoke rapidly with bright, sputtering flame. Even after it has been withdrawn from the flame it continues to burn, melts, and drips. It has an acrid odor and results in a hard, irregular black bead.

Polyester
Polyester too melts and shrinks from an approaching flame. It burns and melt slowly. Melting takes place in drips. While burning it smells sweet and
produces a hard, shiny black or brown bead.

I did the burn test with both the poly filling and with the JC cart filling, and I'm pretty sure that the JC is real wool material. The wool burned into an irregular black chunk that you could crumble into ash ... where the poly burned into a HARD black chunk. I'm going to get some of that wool material through the Joanne Fabrics link, and I'll let you know how that works. In the meantime, I'm going to be washing and fluffing my old material ... and looking for a deal on blank carts, because I'm heading on a road trip soon, and have already experienced the pain of dripping and driving.

[Guyver VI]

I've tried a cottonball. Just pull some off make it thin like the real filler and fill up seems to hold more liquid to. And I also wash and hair dry my old fillers and reuse them lol. Works 4 me

[cantstop]

Hi all,

I was sick of the gross burnt plastic tastes from the cartridge filter materials, so I decided to use Hemp rope. I had a big roll of it and figured that it would work because it can take some heat and doesn't really absorb too much.

My result was fantastic. I get huge vapor plumes and the only burnt taste I get, if the atomizer gets too hot, is a slight hemp flavor.
I'll take the hemp over melted polyfill any day!

Hope this helps others,
Cantstop