Anyone feel like giving a newbie some information?

[Dissonance]

I'll start with some background... If you just want to answer the questions skip the next paragraph xD

Ok, so I've never smoked cigs. I do, however, often smoke tobacco from a Hookah. One of the vendors I buy my tobacco off of had a cheap ecig (Looks like an ego battery and a CE4 clearomizer, battery runs at 3.5-4.2v according to package) for $20 so I figured I'd give it a shot. It impressed me enough to invest in a setup actually worth using (Ordered a few Protank 3's and a MVP 2.0, waiting on the MVP to arrive as we speak), though the throat hit is still a bit much for me. As a hookah smoker, I'm used to very little/no harshness (Generally, if it's harsh, the tobacco is being burned and you either packed it wrong or have too many coals on). Originally, I just wanted something I could use in my car while I'm at work and didn't feel like messing with a portable hookah (Something about coals plus a moving vehicle in an area where people drive like ...... didn't sit quite right with me) but now I find myself smoking less hookah and more of the vape... I'm pretty excited to get the MVP in so I can get better clouds, but I'm still worried about the throat hit. All that being said...

Just had a few questions about equipment/materials.

1) PG/VG. I know PG is harsher, VG is thicker with more clouds. This makes me want to get pure VG liquid, but someone told me to stick with 50/50 or I would have problems with clogging/flooding/wicking. Is this true? If so, what equipment would I need to enjoy a pure VG liquid?

2) rba's. I know I'm way too new to be messing with this, but the idea intrigues me. What advantages do RBA's have over the ones I buy for my Protank 3?

3) VV/VW. To my understanding, they both increase power to the atomizer to give you bigger hits. What's the difference, or advantages/disadvantages of using one or the other?

4) What site would y'all recommend to buy juice off of? Right now I'm buying from a local shop (Just started) but I planned on switching to MountBakerVapors just for the price point ($5/15ml v.s. $7/10ml at local shop, haven't compared bigger amounts as I'm just flavor testing at the moment), though steeping sounds annoying. Any other online shops you would recommend?

5) Price points... I know you can make your own juice and rebuild your own attys, how much money do you actually save doing this and is the effort worth the payoff? Or is it more you save a little but just have the ability to customize everything to your preference?

Thanks in advance for anyone that takes the time to respond

 

[Requiem33]

I'm sure someone will take the time to answer your questions.

However I have my own questions.

1) Are you addicted to nicotine? You state you smoke from a hookah but not cigs. So are you addicted?
2) If yes then welcome to the forum and you'll find plenty of help here
3) If NO you're not addicted then why the .... are you using an ecig or even a hookah at all? Is it the popular cool thing to do?

Sorry if I seem harsh but after nearly 20 years of cig addiction and trying to quit over and over I find it hard to understand why someone who does not smoke would be using an PV at all... and this hookah stuff is just silly (my daughter does it and I just shake my head from the BS she says about it not having nicotine and it's filtered blah blah BS)

 

[Dakota Jim]

I'll give it shot

1. PG will give you better flavor saturation so 50/50 is what I would recommend and minimize wicking issues. In regards to 100% VG you can thin it out with some distilled water to make it wick better or get into RDAs (Rebuildable Dripping Atomizers) where the thickness of the eliquid does not matter because you are dripping the eliquid directly onto the wick itself - this is inconvenient if you spend a lot of time driving.

2. RBAs (Rebuildable Tank Atomizers) allow you to build to the resistance you want, use the wicking material of your choice (cotton, silica, stainless steel mesh, stainless steel cable, ceramic) are cheaper to run (100 ft of kanthal wire is about $5-$6 delivered off of ebay - you use about 2 inches for each coil and most people will use cotton for the wick) - simplest best working IMHO is the kayfun lite +, most frustrating and hard to get working is any genesis style (aga-t, RSST etc)

3. VV/VW will allow you to tailor your vape to your preference for taste and vapor production - VV - you will need to know the resistance of your attached device, VW - (quickly becoming the preferred choice) will detect the resistance and will set the voltage output to meet what wattage you prefer - low wattage = less throat hit, less flavor and less vapor, higher wattage = more throat hit, more flavor, and more vapor - there is a fine line where flavor goes from good to burnt tasting thus the adjustability

4. MBV is one of the best known economical eliquid suppliers - steeping is not a huge issue and is normally 1/2 completed by the time you receive your order - order the smallest size with no extra flavor shots until you are familiar with that particular flavor to order larger amounts/flavor shots - I DIY so do not have any other economical sites to recommend - high end would be niquid and five pawns

5. between DIY and rebuilding my monthly vaping cost for consumables is less than $10 per month for 200ml of eliquid and 8+ coils (for various tanks and drippers) - DIY initial cost is going to be in the $100 to $150 range for the syringes, needles, bottles, nic base, PG, VG, and a good assortment of flavor concentrates (I use mostly TFA and some Lorann) and once again with flavors start with the smallest size available and for beginners get the nic base 1 or 2 steps up from what you use ie: if you vape at 24mg get 36 or 48mg nic base, as the high nic base of 60 and 100 can be quite toxic if mishandled (never, never, never buy anything above 100mg as this needs extreme handling procedures with extreme building requirements in regards to air circulation, scrub down rooms etc) - any serious thought of DIY eliquids needs to start with the all of the stickies in the DIY subforum

hope this helps

 

[Dissonance]

To Requiem: Yes, I'm addicted. Been smoking hookah daily for a little over three years, and I smoke unwashed tobacco which has a higher nicotine content. If I go a day without a hookah, I can tell. Personally I think cigs are much sillier than hookahs. Never understood why someone would prefer to burn their tobacco rather than bake it... Much more expensive and much worse for your health, not to mention the smell and taste.

And thank you Dakota Jim; that information actually helped a lot. One question, tho; Why do you suggest to order without any flavor shots initially?

 

[patrao_n]

It will have flavor added to begin with. Some flavors if you even get 1 extra flavor shot it becomes very powerful. Some need it some don't. It's best to use no extra shots at first.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

[HighPlains]

Welcome to vaping! I can touch on a few of your questions but will leave the rest to the vaping pros. I prefer a 70/30 PG to VG ratio. It's a personal preference. Basically, the PG is what carries the flavor and VG makes the vapor. Those fog machines at rock concerts are likely using VG to make that mist. Heavy VG will clog certain attys and I don't know how people even get vapor with more than 80% PG.

As for VV/VW it is really all the same to me but I have read a lot of technical explanations. I just keep adjusting on or the other until I find the sweet spot. You can adjust one or the other but not both at the same time. VW is simple on my 134 because I can just set it at 8.5 for just about anything and forget it while I always seem to be fiddling with the VV on other units to get it just right.

I usually buy juice at local stores just to try different flavors, and then try to make them myself. The reason for DIY is because it is 1) Fun and 2) much cheaper. MUCH CHEAPER. I buy 250ML of 24mg unflavored nicotine juice for $14 on line and flavor concentrates are inexpensive to buy. The savings are obvious. It's fun making my own concoctions and giving them to friends to sample. They always say "You made this?!??!!"

 

[Baditude]

However I have my own questions.

1) Are you addicted to nicotine? You state you smoke from a hookah but not cigs. So are you addicted?
2) If yes then welcome to the forum and you'll find plenty of help here
3) If NO you're not addicted then why the .... are you using an ecig or even a hookah at all? Is it the popular cool thing to do?

Sorry if I seem harsh but after nearly 20 years of cig addiction and trying to quit over and over I find it hard to understand why someone who does not smoke would be using an PV at all... and this hookah stuff is just silly (my daughter does it and I just shake my head from the BS she says about it not having nicotine and it's filtered blah blah BS)

This is rather close-minded on your part. I can understand where you are coming from about a decades-long habit of nicotine addiction; I come from the same background myself. My cigarette addiction was over 30 years.

However, e-cigarettes have not yet been declared a stop-smoking device by the FDA. In fact, their official purpose has yet to be defined. Until the day the FDA makes that determination, then anyone who so choses to use an e-cig or personal vaporizer has that right.

There was a time about a year ago when I thought like you do. Then my college-age daughter asked for her own mod setup for her birthday this past summer. She's not a smoker, but does occassionally smoke hookah socially with her friends. Her BF, brother, and several of her friends smoke cigarettes. My daughter only wanted to vape for the flavors, with NO NICOTINE.

I thought long and hard about considering her wish. Fearing that she might be tempted to pick up the cigarette habit in college, I decided that perhaps I might help divert that possibility by getting her a mod setup like she requested.

Well, a few months later she has been vaping nicotine-free flavored e-liquids. She has managed to convert her BF, brother, and at least a couple of her friends over to vaping to quit cigarettes.

Sometimes we need to look outside the box. Because of my daughter's vaping, she has hopefully changed the lives of several people by encouraging them to vape and not smoke.

 

[North_Co]

I'm just taking the baby steps into RTA/RBAs, and I went through about $200 worth of ....ty purchases to get there, so take my info for what that's worth.

1) VG with a properly mixed flavor is amazing. PG has a tendency to add a certain harshness and sweetness to the flavor that I personally don't like, but I also dislike the almost cloying sweetness a lot of the popular juices have (MBV, since it's been brought up, to me is like vaping sugar.) Good VG juices are on the more expensive side, though, and will definitely not play too well with any manufactured coil.

2) RBA(genesis-style rebuildables)/RTA(rebuildable tank atomizers. Kayfun, Rus 91%, Aqua)/RDAs(drippers), built right, will outperform any manufactured coil hands down. There's a few considerations to this-material, build, and the flow design of the atty. Kanger is pretty good (though i've heard quite a bit of negativity towards the 3's dual-coil setups), but overall, the basic idea for a manufactured coil is to be the cheapest and easiest design-you won't see contact coil/dragon coil/nanocoil designs and you will have a coil with the possible amount of material used. Rebuildables you build yourself, so you can choose the correct materials and build without worrying about marketability and profit margins. You can technically rebuild kanger coils (at least the standard ones, not too sure about the 3's dual coils), but it's a bit harder than building on a dedicated atty.

3) VV/VW are just different modes of the same thing: the basic battery (3.7v 18650/18350) will, over the life of it's charge, output from 4.2v to 3.4v (without damage). A power modulator (VV/VW chip) will modulate that voltage to apply much higher or lower voltage and thus heating to the coils. As mentioned before, the big difference between VV and VW is that VV will allow you to set the voltage only (you will have to find a sweet spot for each coil/atomizer yourself, basically) and VW will detect the resistance of the atomizer and apply the proper voltage to get you a consistent vaping experience between atomizers A, B and C. In my experience, you will still want different wattage between different coils and atomizers, so you will still have to adjust both. The bonus to VW is that it includes a resistance meter, which will help you when you start rebuilding coils. And you will. To that end, the MVP is a great device, since it has both VV and VW modes, along with a resistance display. You made a very good choice there.

4) I don't know your tastes, so that you might have to discover on your own. I was a cigarette smoker that was really into cigars and pipe tobacco, so I gravitate towards manufacturers and flavors that are not sweet at all and are truer to the very complex flavoring of a pure tobacco or a well-aged cigar than towards the fruitier stuff, to give some perspective. For me, of the things I've tried, want2vape's cigar flavors have been amazing. CI Cigar tastes like a light-leaf cigar minus the burning, and their berry/ecopure mixes are aweosmely berry-like without being sweet.

5) Price point-wise, rebuilding is the way to go. I usually go through a coil a week or so on a Protank coiled setup (high VG/thick juices)-depending on your supplier, that's $5-$15 a month. I just ordered the Aqua clone and enough wick+coil to last me a few months from 101vape for $40 shipped priority mail-barring me blowing out on a real Aqua or a Kayfun, my overall expense past this point will be ~$10 every 4 or 5 months. Rebuilding and DIY and all the more advanced stuff is about time scale and funds, basically: there is an up-front cost to it (RBA/RTA/RDA, mini screwdrivers, wicks, coil, torch if you need one, etc), but the maintenance cost is significantly lower. I'd say that over the first 9 months, you will spend about as much running a protank as you will running an RTA setup, only the costs of the protank will be more spread out. You can also start rebuilding Kanger coils, but they're harder to build than something like a Squape/Kayfun/Trident setup. When comparing costs, you have to also factor in the price of the tank-you already have a PT around, but it's simply a divergent path.

This is probably a rambly mess, it's new years' after all! I hope you get the gist. You did mention ordering "a few protank 3's" though, which I want to add something to-all Protanks have changeable coils-the main advantage of a PT is that almost every part can be replaced. The raison d'etre, so to speak, of the Protank line is that it bridges that gap between RBA/RTAs and the disposable attys and cartos. Be careful when ordering the coils for them, since PT3's have different ones than all the other Kanger offerings-probably more expensive, as well.