Am I doing it wrong?

[bigbassbrent]

I have been doing the DIY thing for about 3 weeks now. It's a lot of fun and I have made some good juices but I cant find a calculator that works the way I want it to. It seems the calculators I have tried are focused on nic, PG, VG and flavoring percentages, which I don't care too much about along as it is in the general vicinity of what I want. (around 70/30 @ 10mg of nic)

Here is what I do. I start with 36mg 100% PG nic base. I mix 35ml of it with 35ml of PG and 30ml of VG. This gives me 100ml of 70PG/30VG base at 12mg of nic to start with. I then add my flavors to this. I don't really care if I end up with a 72/28 mix at 10mg nic when I am done with my recipe but all the calculators want me to start with percents and then they want to tell me how may drops or ml to use. After I sample a mix and I think it needs more flavor I add a few more drops and record it. So when I am done, I know how may drops I used in my 6ml of base. I want to be able to scale that up when I need to.

Am I going about my mixing totally backwards? I feel like all the calculators want to you mix the vg, pg, nic and flavors at the time that you mix the juice and they do not like me premixing the base beforehand and just adding flavor to that. If I was selling the stuff I could understand the need to be a lot more accurate, but I'm not.

I want a calculator that I can enter what I put into my juice (drops and amount of premix base) and it calculates the percents for me so I can share it with you guys. I usually make 6ml batches when experimenting so I use drops much of the time. I have measured my drops to be 18/ml. I made my own spreadsheet which seems to work but I feel like I'm just not going about it the right way. I haven't really tried to make more than 12ml of juice at a time so I don't know if I can accurately scale up when I need to. I don't know, maybe I need to re-evaluate how I go about my mixing???? Thanks for any advice.

 

[bnrkwest]

I mix my nic PG/VG before hand as well. My rule of thumb is 1 drop of flavor per 1-2 ml of unflavored nic juice. So if I use a 5 ml bottle of unflavored nic juice, I will add 3-5 drops of flavor. Test it and adjust. bnrk

 

[DuaneNeveu]

If it's working for you, then all that really matters has been satisfied.

True, you have some work to do if you'd care to share recipes, but for your own purposes you're fine as long as you ensure your safety. Since you're starting with 36mg nic juice and diluting it, you're likely fine in that respect. One way to simplify the process may be to keep an accurate measurement for the amount of flavour you add as you tweak. At least then you could plug your numbers into a calculator or spreadsheet for sharing recipes.

Scubabatdan's Ejuice calculator may be of some help with that too!

Regardless, and even if you're not saving the recipes using a calculator, so long as you're keeping notes of some kind to help you replicate your favourites you won't have to rely on remembering those special concoctions.

 

[Hoosier]

Might want to try this one... http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/410931-e-liquid-calculator-recipe-book.html since you can use the section that just concentrates on flavoring and base with the nicotine being a small foot note at the bottom.

 

[bigbassbrent]

Might want to try this one... http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/410931-e-liquid-calculator-recipe-book.html since you can use the section that just concentrates on flavoring and base with the nicotine being a small foot note at the bottom.

Thanks to everyone, I feel better now. I am happy with methods, and they do work for me, and now with the calc that Hoosier linked me to I can do my calculations with no nic! Thanks again.