Amount of Nicotine Liquid

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Mugenchicken

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Hey all!

Firstly, my apologies for either being too lazy to read or too dumb to understand all this as i have been vaping for the past 3 weeks. It has been extremely demoralizing and frustrating because of not being to find the right e-juice and etc.

Because of my location, its been a real challenge to get and try out all the different juices, therefore, i have finally decided to either DIY my own juice (probably later when i'm more confident) or purchase ZERO nicotine juice and add my own nicotine as its easier to find ZERO nicotine juice in my area.

Ok, so the question is, the zero nicotine juice that i have ordered are 10ml 70%PG/30%VG. My target is to get 6mg nicotine into this.

1. What level of nicotine juice should i be buying? very confusing part...
2. How many drops should i be dripping into the juice to achieve 6mg?

Thank you guys..
 

Levitas

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Okay, so here's the thing. Depending on what you're looking to get as an end result (for example: 6mg 70pg/30vg) is correlated to what nic base you're using, mixed with that other juice you're looking to use.

Unless you're buying nic-juice at a 70/30 ratio, it will upset the balance of the original 70/30. Once again though, the amount of nicotine you add to the pre-made bottles is dependent on the nic strength you purchase.

Do you have an idea of what strength nic juice you'll be using?
 

Mugenchicken

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Okay, so here's the thing. Depending on what you're looking to get as an end result (for example: 6mg 70pg/30vg) is correlated to what nic base you're using, mixed with that other juice you're looking to use.

Unless you're buying nic-juice at a 70/30 ratio, it will upset the balance of the original 70/30. Once again though, the amount of nicotine you add to the pre-made bottles is dependent on the nic strength you purchase.

Do you have an idea of what strength nic juice you'll be using?

Thanks for the reply.

No i do not, thats why i'm asking the seniors here to guide me :)
What nic strength and base should I be getting? Is this it? 30ml HC Unflavored E-liquid [Z8 HC Unflavored 30ml] - $6.50 : Healthcabin Electronic Cigarettes - Wholesale and Retail

Thanks
 

LucentShadow

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Hi. I'd suggest reading through these guides to get a general idea how this is usually done:

http://www.ecigexpress.com/blog/diy-how-to-for-dummies/

A Beginners Guide to DIY Electronic Cigarette E-Liquid | Vaping Guides to the Electronic Cigarette

E-Cigarette Forum - Hoosier - Blogs

It sounds as if you got some flavored 0mg/ml nicotine e-liquid, and want to add unflavored nicotine e-liquid to it. That will not only change the balance of PG/VG, as Levitas mentioned, but it will also lower the flavor level of the e-liquid that you have bought.

That's not quite how most people here do DIY e-liquid, but I'll get to that later. If you're looking to get supplies from HealthCabin, you may want to get unflavored nicotine e-liquid in the 36mg/ml nicotine strength, and bigger size bottle, as it's more economical than the lower strength and smaller sizes.

In order to keep near the 70PG/30VG ratio that you already have ordered, you could get the 36mg/ml nicotine 75PG/25VG unflavored e-liquid. There are DIY e-liquid calculators listed in the guides that I posted above that can help with the math, but it's not very hard to do by hand, most of the time.

You have 10ml of 0mg/ml flavored e-liquid, and would add some amount of 36mg/ml to achieve a 6mg/ml result. Since 36 / 6 = 6, then if 1/6 of your mix is the 36mg/ml, and 5/6 is the 0mg/ml, you will get a result of 6mg/ml.

Another way to look at that is to use a formula for averaging all of the 6 parts:
(36 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0) / 6 parts = 6mg/ml.

So, if you have 10ml of 0mg/ml, you'd need to add 2ml of 36mg/ml to get 12ml of 6mg/ml liquid. The flavor would be reduced by 1/6, though.

Yet another way to look at it, which also illustrates what mg/ml actually means, is to total the milligrams of nicotine added, and divide it by the total milliliters of liquid.

10ml of 0mg/ml liquid has 0mg of nicotine.
2ml of 36mg/ml liquid has 72mg of nicotine dissolved into 2ml of liquid. 72mg / 2ml = 36mg/ml.

Mix those, and you have 72mg of nicotine in 12ml of liquid, and 72mg / 12ml = 6mg per milliliter.

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Now, that answers the original question, but I wouldn't really recommend doing it that way if you want to get the most out of DIY. Normally, you'd buy unflavored nicotine liquid, plain PG and/or VG, and e-liquid flavorings (food flavorings). Syringes to measure with, and empty bottles to work with would usually be the minimum hardware to buy. You should plan your purchase of the liquids for your target PG/VG ratio, but it wouldn't hurt to buy some of each plain PG and VG so that you can be more flexible with the result. Again, if HealthCabin is the vendor that you want to use, this is what I would get:

115ml HC Unflavored E-liquid (36mg/ml, 100% PG)
115ml PROPYLENE GLYCOL USP
115ml Vegetable Glycerin USP
Some 10ml bottles of flavorings that sound good to you
Empty Ejuice Bottle(childproof) - several of whatever sizes you like; 10 and 30ml are my favorites.
E-juice Injector(1ml 2.5ml 5ml 10ml 20ml 30ml) - a couple of 5 and 10ml sizes is usually fine.

The flavorings have to be experimented with in order to find the amount to add of each to get the desired flavoring level. It's best to start with single flavor mixes, and note how much flavoring you used to get a good flavor, before trying to mix more than one flavor.
This is the hardest part of DIY, and takes some time to master. Hoosier's blog link near the top of my post explains that well.

There are many ways to get a 70pg/30vg 6mg/ml result. The supplies that I listed aren't the easiest way, but are lower overall cost, and easy enough. Let's say that you have found that the flavoring that you want to use is good at 5% of the mix. Here are the ratios to make a batch of any size:

16.67% unflavored 100% PG 36mg/ml nicotine liquid (1/6 of 36 is your target of 6, so 1/6 of the mix is needed)
5% flavoring (these are generally PG-based or alcohol-based)
48.33% plain PG (this should be your 70% PG target, minus the 16.67% PG nic liquid, minus the PG flavoring percentage)
30% plain VG

So, for a 10ml batch:

1.667ml of unflavored PG 36mg/ml nicotine (1.667ml * 36mg = 60mg in 10ml total = 6mg/ml strength)
0.5ml of flavoring
4.833ml of plain PG
3ml of plain VG

While you can't measure quite that accurately with a syringe, you can come close enough that it would be fine. Also, note that you'd run out of PG before you would VG, since more PG is used. You'd run out of both plain PG and VG well before you ran out of the nicotine liquid.

I hope this helps you to understand. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand something.
 

Mugenchicken

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LucentShadow, you have no idea how helpful your post was. Thank you so very much. I think i now understand the basics.
In fact i think i was confusing myself and my question in itself was not quite rite and i was looking at mixing it the wrong way.

Let me digest and read more and will post back here if i have any other questions. Thanks again
 

Mugenchicken

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16.67% unflavored 100% PG 36mg/ml nicotine liquid (1/6 of 36 is your target of 6, so 1/6 of the mix is needed)
5% flavoring (these are generally PG-based or alcohol-based)
48.33% plain PG (this should be your 70% PG target, minus the 16.67% PG nic liquid, minus the PG flavoring percentage)
30% plain VG

This was extremely helpful.

Question 1 - If i want more or less flavor, i would just add or reduce the amount without adjusting the PG & VG rite?

Question 2 - Are there other vendors out there that would make this mix easier as you mentioned the supplies from healthcabin may not be the easiest.
 
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LucentShadow

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This was extremely helpful.

Question 1 - If i want more or less flavor, i would just add or reduce the amount without adjusting the PG & VG rite?

Question 2 - Are there other vendors out there that would make this mix easier as you mentioned the supplies from healthcabin may not be the easiest.

1) Since the flavoring would be included in the non-VG (or thin liquids) portion of the liquid, the plain PG should be adjusted by an inversely proportional amount, if the flavoring is adjusted. So, if you increase the flavoring from 5% to 8% of the mix, then 3% should be subtracted from the plain PG percentage in order to maintain the PG/VG ratio and keep the total at the necessary 100% mark.

2) There are many other vendors out there, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with HealthCabin. They seem to have good variety and prices. Wizard Labs and My Freedom Smokes are two that I use. Wizard Labs seems to be quite popular these days.

Anyway, there are some vendors that let you customize the PG/VG ratio more, or offer higher strengths of nicotine, but that wouldn't necessarily make it easier to use. That depends upon what you use for a base nicotine liquid. Although I avoid any PG other than flavorings, I prefer not to work with 100%VG nicotine liquid, since it is very thick and difficult to work with. If I were using a larger percentage of PG, I'd leave the VG portion as plain VG. It does not pour well, and can be difficult to fully extract from a bottle or graduated cylinder.

There are many ways that you can achieve a 70pg/30vg result. That's where planning the proper supplies can help. Here are a few recipes that use different bases that illustrate that point:

16.67% unflavored 100% PG 36mg/ml nicotine liquid (1/6 of 36 is your target of 6, so 1/6 of the mix is needed)
5% flavoring (PG or alcohol-based)
48.33% plain PG
30% plain VG

16.67% unflavored 100% VG 36mg/ml nicotine liquid
13.33% plain VG (to finish the 30% VG)
10% flavoring (PG or alcohol-based)
60% plain PG (to complete the 70% PG)

16.67% unflavored 70%PG/30%VG 36mg/ml nicotine liquid (since 16.67% of the mix is 70/30, the the remaining 83.33% needs to be the same ratio)
25% plain VG (30%VG portion of the remaining 83.33%)
15% flavoring (PG or alcohol-based)
43.33% plain PG (70%PG portion of the remaining 83.33%, minus the 15% flavoring)

Those all use 36mg/ml base, and leave a lot of room for variations in flavoring amount or PG/VG ratio, so they are pretty flexible. If you used 18mg/ml base, you could get near your result with easier math, but using VG nicotine liquid, which can be harder to work with. It's generally more expensive, too, depending upon how the vendor prices different strengths of nic liquid. Your target 6mg/ml divided by the 18mg/ml base equals 0.3333 (or 33.33%,) so that would be the nicotine liquid portion of the mix. Easy math for a 67PG/33VG 6mg/ml liquid.

33.33% unflavored 100% VG 18mg/ml nicotine liquid
12% flavoring (PG or alcohol-based)
54.67% plain PG (to complete the 66.67% PG)

If you changed your nicotine level, then it would get more complicated, unless you don't mind changing the VG portion a bit with it.

Ultimately, I'd go with the with the original setup that I recommended, because it's very flexible for changes, is generally more economical, fairly easy on the math, and uses a relatively safe strength of nicotine base to work with.

While I recommend understanding the math so that you can double-check results, for safety, e-juice calcs can make the process simpler. Here's a popular one:

eJuice Me Up - Best eJuice Calculator

Probably too much info here, for the question asked, but I can't help it sometimes. ;) Hope it helps.
 

Mugenchicken

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Thanks again for the reply. Would it be easier to do this ? (just confirming that i'm on the right track here..)

IF i have 50%PG/50%VG unflavored 6mg/ml nicotine liquid, so to achieve 50/50 with 6mg juice my mix would be =

95% unflavored 50%PG / 50%VG 6mg/ml nicotine liquid
5% flavoring - This would adjust the level of PG a bit IF the flavoring is PG based i guess?

is that rite?
 
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LucentShadow

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Thanks again for the reply. Would it be easier to do this ? (just confirming that i'm on the right track here..)

IF i have 50%PG/50%VG unflavored 6mg/ml nicotine liquid, so to achieve 50/50 with 6mg juice my mix would be =

95% unflavored 50%PG / 50%VG 6mg/ml nicotine liquid
5% flavoring - This would adjust the level of PG a bit IF the flavoring is PG based i guess?

is that rite?

That would be easy, but would result in 5.7mg/ml nicotine strength (95% of 6mg/ml,) and 52.5%PG/47.5%VG. That's not a very significant change, and so would work just fine for most people. You'd probably want to make sure to get potent flavorings for that method, so that you don't need to dilute the nicotine very much. Alcohol-based flavorings are often more potent than PG-based ones, like these are reported to be:

http://www.ecigexpress.com/diy-flavoring-flavorsexpress-c-16_96

DIY-Flavoring-Alcohol Base | E Liquid Flavoring-Alcohol Base - E Cig : Joye eGo & eGo-T | Boge Leo | Cartomizers | E-Liquid | Electronic Cigarettes | eGo Tank

If you are confident that you will not want to mix any e-liquid higher than 6mg/ml, that method will work fairly well. I've been doing something similar for the last few months, and have gotten used to the ease of making a mix. I don't do this for every mix, but I find myself doing it on most of them.

I work with 36 or 48mg/ml VG thinned with distilled water as a base liquid, and I've found that most of the mixes that I make end up with a total of 5-10% flavoring in them, so I made a lower nicotine unflavored mix that will make my 18mg/ml target strength if 7.5% flavoring is used. With 5-10% flavoring, I'll end up with 17.5-18.5mg/ml finished nicotine strength, which is close enough for me.

With 92.5% of the mix being nicotine liquid, I need an unflavored 19.46mg/ml liquid to work with, so I mix my base down to that strength by using 54% of the 36mg/ml base (19.46/36=0.54). That leaves 46% for filler, so I add 40% plain VG and 6% distilled water (too keep the VG properly thinned.) I generally make this new 19.46mg/ml base in a 120ml bottle, so that lasts me for around 12 batches of 10ml mixes. Then, I make some more. This still allows me to vary it significantly, if need be, since my original base is quite a bit higher than the 19.46mg/ml.
 

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