Budget vaping

[Doctorvapes]

First off, I'm sorry to ask so many questions of this forum I'm just really on a budget and trying to figure out what will work best for me.

There's two of us vaping in my household and we vape 6 mg juice on baby beast atomizer with 4 eleaf ipower between us. We've been buying from vape wild at 6.99 a 30 ml which adds up.

I've thought of everything from DIY juice which I asked about and researched and that's a start up cost to rtas or rdas but realized I'd need external battery mods to power those after asking.

So my question is to knowledgeable vapers, next month between us we will roughly have a 250 dollar budget to hopefully save money but within that budget we need to make sure we have enough vaping supplies for at least a month, could possibly extend the budget to 300 if needed but want to start saving money from pre-made coils and juices... So as an experienced vaper what would you suggest buying or getting into to save money first with this type of budget for two people?

 

[AzPlumber]

DIY is pennies compared to ANY store bought juice and unflavored DIY is even less expensive.

 

[Tonee N]

1qt of PG($11) 1qt of VG($11) Scale($29) pipettes, syringes, all from Amazon.com.
Ecigexpress.com
Nude Nic.
With flavors starting out costs approximately $125. But each 30ml you make will only cost you $1.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

 

[Walee]

Seriously, You can snag VG and PG at about $20.00 a gallon. Grab 250 or 500 ml of nicotine @ 100g/ml for another $20.00. Sixty bucks. One carton of stinkies. At least 6 months of vapor. Do some research on the flavors you like now and get an idea of what they are made out of. You can then go the e-liquid-recipes and start shopping recipes. You may be surprised how few flavor concentrates you need to get going on a few juices. The savings is VERY significant and there are some really good recipes posted.

 

[Eskie]

Building your own coils did save some money. DIY your own juice saves big bucks. That simple.

Get one liter of 100 mg nic. At a 5 mg juice (simplify the math) that's enough for 20 LITERS of juice. That'll cost you about $50. Given your budget of $250 to cover your month, you'll be able to make enough juice from that for 2,000 household members.

To start out a liter of PG and VG, $20 free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime.

Couple of glass bottles, a few syringes, and a few plastic unicorn bottles, $15 same source free shipping. That's $85, with enough raw materials (VG the limiting factor of a liter of juice, but a liter will last a few people more than a month, hell, more than a few).

Tough part. Flavors. First what do you like? If you know that go hunt down some recipes/clones of your faves. Buy only those flavors needed to start. Maybe 8 flavors out of the gate, about $35.

So, for $120 you have enough supplies for at least six months of juice with enough nic on hand for another year or two depending how much nic in the juice and how many ml you vape. Nothing else comes close to savings for high quality juice.

How hard is DIY? If you can mix a drink you can DIY. Coll building requires some skill and time to learn.

Building my own coils probably saves me $20 a month over buying factory coils. Mixing my own juice saves me closer to $100 a month of premium retail juice.

When you do figure out RTAs are for you, realize one, the cost of an RTA is about the same as a factory coil tank. Wire and wick is your only ongoing cost which is pennies. However even if you burn through three factory coils a week the big savings are still on the DIY side of things.

 

[Opinionated]

Lol... did anyone say they wanted MY opinion? Hahaha.. I'm sorry, this thread got funny so I thought I'd add to the hilarity.

I'm an anti DIY starter kit person, just saying, for those on a budget. I don't think they are necessary, and neither are scales for goodness sake.

By all means if you wife has a scale in her kitchen for her baking, then of course you can use it - but heck I HAVE a scale in my kitchen for my baking and I've never once used it for DIY.. no need. I might be .... when it comes to making dough, but I find no need to be that .... when it comes to ejuice. Ejuice is all about flavor - it's more like making spaghetti sauce than like making bread dough.

That said, as others have indicated you will be happy with a gallon of VG, some Nicotine (you can even get smooth nicotine salts and you may find yourself happier) PG if you need it but you may not, and a handful of flavors and a few syringes - you can even reuse some of the bottles you already have right now for e juice... buy a couple more.

Find one good recipe that takes as little flavors as possible... and vape that for the first month.

You don't need an external battery mod to make your own coils - what you have is just fine, you just need either an rba base for the atty you have, or an rta... (preferably start with a single coil set up at first)

For that you need a few tools, many of which you likely already have round your house - but the biggest savings is going to be in DIYing your own ejuice.

 

[Eskie]

If you're using standard 30 or 60 ml glass bottles to mix in (or whatever size bottle you choose as long as you can see the level, and shake, mix or whatever you do blend together) once you're familiar with where the fill to the level is, simply fill everything into the bottle and then add the VG to fill to the fill point. For me it's the easiest way to deal with that viscous stuff. Even if not quite as precise, it will be within 1-2% of your goal which is good enough for me.

 

[Doctorvapes]

I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions.

I bought a liter of nicotine, gallon of vg and liter of pg along with many bottles and mixing tools from nicotine river.

I bought all my flavors from wizard labs and was quite pleased with their selection.

I settled on the pharaoh mini rta so I picked two of those up, a coil master kit and a few other things at vapenw.

So this was an investment but not too bad when you figure out how much we were spending on juice and coils then compare it to how much I'm going to save now.

 

[ScottP]

@Beamslider @stols001 @mattiem @Letitia

If you're using standard 30 or 60 ml glass bottles to mix in (or whatever size bottle you choose as long as you can see the level, and shake, mix or whatever you do blend together) once you're familiar with where the fill to the level is, simply fill everything into the bottle and then add the VG to fill to the fill point. For me it's the easiest way to deal with that viscous stuff. Even if not quite as precise, it will be within 1-2% of your goal which is good enough for me.

If you are using clear bottles, you could always put a strip of tape vertically on the side from the very bottom to the very top. Then as you pour measured ingredients in mark a line on the tape where the level is once that ingredient is added. After doing this once per bottle, you now have a marked guide on the side of the bottle so that it becomes the measuring device. You just have to always put the ingredients in in the same order. Much more reliable than just "eyeballing it" based on memory. If using Scotch tape, you may need to put another strip over the first one once the lines have been marked to prevent the ink from smearing off.

 

[mattiem]

I agree with everyone about DIY e-liquid. That is where the savings really shine. You can buy flavor blends at a few places. I have bought a few at onestopdiyshop.com . You can save some cash by buying the blends and some of them are very good. onestop sells sample sizes so it won't cost much to find some that you like.

This is my simple way to DIY. You will find that it doesn't take a lot of equipment.

 

[CMD-Ky]

Agreed, I dumped a fair amount of money in a kit and other than the syringes, I don't use any of it.

I don't think DIY starter kits are the way to go. They come with lots of stuff you don't need. Amazon for empty juice bottles and VG and PG, Nude Nic for 100 mg nic and a couple syringes, Some Capella Vanilla Custard and TFA Vanilla bean Ice Cream from ecig express and you're in business. 13% Custard, 3% Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.

 

[Asbestos4004]

Agreed, I dumped a fair amount of money in a kit and other than the syringes, I don't use any of it.

me too...it was about 6 years ago. Funnels, graduated cylinders, pipettes, crappy nic, blah blah blah....Thanks Wizard Labs!

 

[mattiem]

I wish that I had seen your blog before I started DIY. I bought a kit and a bunch of stuff I never use. I am down to a 60ml and 10ml syringe, a blunt 3 inch 14 gauge needle and a 125ml bottle. I use 100% VG thinned with water to about the viscosity of 70 VG/30 PG. Simplicity.
I was curious, why do you use saline in your mix? What is the effect of the NaCl on your coils?

I hope my simple way of mixing will help those that think one must be a rocket scientist to mix these simple ingredients together. I was a bit nervous until I found how simple it really is.

It may just be in my head but I think it helps with the dryness vaping can cause.

edited to add: I don't think it affects my coils but I have been using it for years so it might and I have just gotten used to it.

 

[sofarsogood]

My diy costs 1.1 cents per ml. I pay the typical market prices for supplies, $20 a gallon for PG and VG, $50 for 100,000 mg of nic, $14 for a 120 ml bottle of all-in-one flavoring by Capella. Those supplies will keep me vaping for 4 years so about $25 a year. I mix 200 ml about once a month, takes about 15 minutes. My cost of wick and wire for 26 builds and 50 fresh wicks a year is $2. Vaping isn't cheap, it's free.

 

[b.m.]

To make diy really simple,you said you buy from Vape wild.They have flavor concentrates of their flavors for $1.99 for 10ml or $3.99 for a 30ml.If you have a few specific juices you like from them,buy the concentrate,some vg,pg,and nic,and also some syringes or a scale,then you'll have juice you know you like,then you can start grabbing other flavors as the budget permits to experiment with.

 

[Doctorvapes]

Wow, so many good suggestions. I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to reply to this.

I think I would like to mix by volume, it's true it's all overwhelming but I'm sure it can't be that hard.

I guess I was thinking you'd need a million and one flavors to start, I'll look for simple recipes or just start with single or stand alone flavors as suggested.

Not sure where I am at with the rta or rda decision but it's nice to know my mods will power them.

 

[mattiem]

Strictly speaking you are correct MTL means exactly that, sucking the vapor into your mouth, then inhaling from there. However, in general, most MTL users use a tighter draw (closer to what it is like smoking a cigarette) , and do that with higher resistances (1.8-2.2 ranges) with lower wattages (8-15 or so). Those other parameters are generalities though.

Personally I MTL with what would be considered a tight DL air flow, at around 0.5 ohms in TC 435F with a 30 Watt warm-up. So I guess I would be considered more of a hybrid vaper.

Thank you Scott. I usually use a 1.8Ω coil with my device set about 7 watts and 12 mg/ml e-liquid with my topper set for a fairly loose draw. I call my way of vaping MTN (mouth through nose). Ain't it great that there is no right or wrong way...all that matters is finding a way that works.

 

[AzPlumber]

Well I found some pre built coils to start with on Amazon in varying sizes to get my feet wet. They were at a decent price so I went for it.

Over the next few days I'm going to have fun picking up everything I need and with DIY juice and learning to put together and wick on a deck, I'll be busy.

FYI, drawing VG up in a syringe you will need a large bore needle at least 14 gauge (green)

 

[SteveS45]

For less than a weeks worth of cigarette money you can get a DIY Starter kit from Liquid Barn with enough supplies to make 1,400 Ml's of e-Liquids. All you need after that is flavorings and more NIC/VG/PG to keep going.

 

[CagedSpam]

I'd need external battery mods to power those after asking

Unless I'm missing something your current mod(s) should be fine to run most RDA's, and there is an RBA for your Baby Beast tank.

Rebuildable Atomizer Head RBA Head for SMOKTech TFV8 Baby Beast

You probably already knew this but just trying to help.