Are you done stocking up?

[bombastinator]

There are certainly neonicotinoid pesticides, but somehow I don't think that USP grade nic in PG or VG is critical to agriculture.

There are many insect neurotoxins. The most common one is a chemical provided and first found in peonies or chrysanthemums iirc. Many insects have grown resistant to it. It’s different than specifically nicotine most of the time. I had emerald borer beetles in my trees (had to have them removed) and was told the only way they might be saved is if I drilled a hole in them and injected nicotine. And then it would only do it for one season. Wasn’t worth it. I had em cut down instead. I very much doubt it would be USP grade though. The thing about emerald borer beetles is they’re an invasive species and are doing massive damage, so anything that works on em is likely to be protected.

 

[Rossum]

I very much doubt it would be USP grade though.

As I said, pesticide use does not explain why the FDA hasn't aggressively gone after products and suppliers we vapers use to mix our liquids.

Oh, and we've lost all our ash trees as well.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

As I said, pesticide use does not explain why the FDA hasn't aggressively gone after products and suppliers we vapers use to mix our liquids.

Oh, and we've lost all our ash trees as well.

From what I read a few years ago, to use nicotine even somewhat effectively as an industrial agricultural insecticide to feed a nation and trade to keep that nation viable, it has to be used at a minimum 400mg/ml strength and it's not used in the US agriculture industry. It's just not effective enough to rely on if you have better options and that makes it quite expensive. Doable if it's all that's economically available to you and if it's effective on the pests you need to combat against, but not preferrable if you're serious about making sure hunger isn't the norm.

Only one of the USA nic sellers I'm aware of sells above 100mg/ml. In fact they sell above strengths we're allowed to talk about here. But absolutely none of them are hiding the fact that they are selling for either vape or other human consumption purpose (if you have "vape" or vapor" in your name and/or you sell obvious vape supples, the intent is obvious...obviously). And since nicotine is a regulated "tobacco product", Im surprised that, at the very least, prices haven't gone up through the roof across all retailers.. Overall nic prices did go up since the 2020 (2021?) USPS smackdown, but a few retailers didn't raise the price that much (under 100% and some under 50%), although others increased their price by XXX%. However a good bit did either go out of business or stopped selling nic base.

I'm mostly shocked that retail nic is still available at 100+mg/ml at all TBH. But that won't last forever. It's tobacco. And RD has no tobacco in it unless you put it there, so it's rdiculous to claim it's a "tobacco product", but we can't use that argument with nic, especially since the marketing is obvious.

So yeah, I'm as shocked as you.

 

[englishmick]

Yeah, we were all expecting nic to vanish from the retail market. Wouldn't be hard for them to do it. Just limit sales to licensed manufacturers only. The vendors still around also sell wholesale so I suspect it wouldn't be a big deal for them to lose the retail sales.

Maybe it's just that there aren't many people making their own juice so it doesn't matter much to the regulators. That might change when they get around to banning flavored juice and the black market grows.

 

[Rossum]

Maybe it's just that there aren't many people making their own juice

Or perhaps most of the people who do make their own juice stocked their freezers long ago?

 

[bombastinator]

where did that come from?

The batteries sound totally worn out. In time they will become dangerous even if they’re “empty” though that might take a very very long time. If they’re not “empty” a perhaps shorter time. They may not even be safe to charge as a result. I try to get rid of such things. I hope it’s not sophomoric to consider metallic lithium mixed with lithium carbonate to still be potentially dangerous. I don’t know how they’re mixed. I get the impression it’s a bit random. I don’t know though. Better safe than sorry. It’s not impossible given the info that I have that some metallic lithium will remain covering the entire back of the “sheet” in even a dead and discharged battery. not a lot. But some.

 

[bombastinator]

*notes reaction* I was sort of hoping someone might say something to the effect of “you’re wrong. Here’s why..” because then I would know more about how the things work. I was just thinking that the stuff is a slurry, not a solid. I don’t know enough. I do know it is suggested by people who know more about it than me to do that with worn out batteries so that is what I will do.

 

[gloopdegurp]

I might be content now,

Mods only, no box, manual, or spare bits.
(they came with a little stocking though!)

 

[mcduffy]

WIREOPTIM
40% OFF MOST ITEMS!
~ ALSO ~
15% OFF WHOLESALE!
DISCOUNT SHOWN AT CART!

 

[bombastinator]

WIREOPTIM
40% OFF MOST ITEMS!
~ ALSO ~
15% OFF WHOLESALE!
DISCOUNT SHOWN AT CART!

Might get in trouble for this

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

It was mention here a couple years ago that it's possible that vape videos would be taken off of youtube. I agreed and downloaded a lot of how-to vids that are important to me or that I felt might be important to me later. But I never got every single video I wanted.

Well that did happen to a degree. Youtube changed their rules in terms of vape-related links, contests, etc. and whatnot so that got a good many youtube vapers in a bad situation, at least for a while until they were able to "clean" things up and go through the channel reinstatement process.

Now I don't know if Pbusardo ever got nailed for a time in that whole wrath as I haven't paid attention to vape for over a year, but last night I noticed that a bunch of his older vids of older gear are gone. I can't find anything I searched for that I know that he had a video for, whether I already downloaded it or not. My guess is that he got a strike and went in and cleaned out any video that could have a violation that would get him banned. It's a shame because people like me who use mostly older stuff benefit from videos of older gear with how-to info. Pbusardo's channel no doubt had the most old gear vids because he's been around so long. And they were mostly high quality and very informative.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

Back in late 2021 and early 2022 when Paypal rolled out smackdowns on Chinese vape retailers, HeavenGifts decided to just go strictly wholesale as a result. I just now noticed that they went out of business entirely in 2023. Their notice seems to say that they are going to venture into making their own vape products brand instead of retailing and wholesaling? Anyhow, I never bought much from them except their clearance items because their prices always seem to be a bit on the high side, kinda on par with US online prices, but I never had a problem with them. They and HealthCabin were around when I first found ECF (HealthCabin was my first purchase from a Chinese retailer).

 

[Sir Kadly]

Back in late 2021 and early 2022 when Paypal rolled out smackdowns on Chinese vape retailers, HeavenGifts decided to just go strictly wholesale as a result. I just now noticed that they went out of business entirely in 2023. Their notice seems to say that they are going to venture into making their own vape products brand instead of retailing and wholesaling? Anyhow, I never bought much from them except their clearance items because their prices always seem to be a bit on the high side, kinda on par with US online prices, but I never had a problem with them. They and HealthCabin were around when I first found ECF (HealthCabin was my first purchase from a Chinese retailer).

They are behind the Elf Bars I believe.

 

[bombastinator]

There are other platforms, even paying ones, if perhaps not so well paying ones, as YouTube. The problem is either there are standards which do not allow vaping videos, or no standards at all, that are populated by extremist political trolls of multiple genres. All deploring the others. Note how twitter(x) was inundated by fascists after limitations were removed. There is little middle ground. Not sure how to solve this one, though it may have already been done and I am merely not aware of it. I don’t pay a lot of attention. A hand curated thing for vape videos? The problem is there is not much money there so there is little reason to do it. The things exist and have been made. All that is required is to house them somewhere that is available. Maybe take a page from those same extremists and use their tactics. I don’t know. go full throttle and do a torrent or something. Would require people to put their content on it with licenses to do a legal one though. Might not be possible. There are also numerous other models like floatplane. (There are a bunch of them. That’s just the one that comes immediately to mind for me. I don’t know if it would even be possible on that particular one. I rather doubt it). This may already be a thing even.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

Little update on that Istick 30W that died in storage. I opened it up to make preparations to change the battery in it. But I found it's not the battery that went bad, it measures 4.17v.

Long story short, I found that the problem was the screen's ribbon cable, which is strange because the mod should have worked without the screen working, but it didn't. But once I messed around with the ribbon cable and could see the screen flicker on and off (but dim). I put an atty on it was working.

Unfortunately, in trying to figure out how to lift the screen to get to the ribbon cable connection it appears I have damaged the ribbon cable or the screen as I can't get the screen to flicker as I did before by putting pressure on the cable. It works, but the mod's perpetually in stealth mode. This mod doesn't even have stealth mode so added a new feature

So I guess the takeaway here is that PCB components and screens can indeed go bad in storage. That goes for all mods, not just integrated battery mods. I will be purchasing more desiccant now, to help control the environment in the boxes a bit better. Impossible to say if I could have prevented this, though. I mean it is an el cheapo device and it could just be that I got a bad one. happens.

============

On a brighter note, I have an Istick 20W that I had to stop using long ago because the crappy brass 510 stripped beyond use. That's my oldest "box mod". Would never have bought any 30W versions if they didn't put a stainless steel 510 on it! Anyhow, I rigged it so that it can be used (very carefully), charged it up and was able to vape on it (almost exclusively) for about 1.5 days at 7.5W! So I think it's safe to say that battery's health is near 100% even after all these years, mostly in storage.

 

[bombastinator]

From what I read a few years ago, to use nicotine even somewhat effectively as an industrial agricultural insecticide to feed a nation and trade to keep that nation viable, it has to be used at a minimum 400mg/ml strength and it's not used in the US agriculture industry. It's just not effective enough to rely on if you have better options and that makes it quite expensive. Doable if it's all that's economically available to you and if it's effective on the pests you need to combat against, but not preferrable if you're serious about making sure hunger isn't the norm.

Only one of the USA nic sellers I'm aware of sells above 100mg/ml. In fact they sell above strengths we're allowed to talk about here. But absolutely none of them are hiding the fact that they are selling for either vape or other human consumption purpose (if you have "vape" or vapor" in your name and/or you sell obvious vape supples, the intent is obvious...obviously). And since nicotine is a regulated "tobacco product", Im surprised that, at the very least, prices haven't gone up through the roof across all retailers.. Overall nic prices did go up since the 2020 (2021?) USPS smackdown, but a few retailers didn't raise the price that much (under 100% and some under 50%), although others increased their price by XXX%. However a good bit did either go out of business or stopped selling nic base.

I'm mostly shocked that retail nic is still available at 100+mg/ml at all TBH. But that won't last forever. It's tobacco. And RD has no tobacco in it unless you put it there, so it's rdiculous to claim it's a "tobacco product", but we can't use that argument with nic, especially since the marketing is obvious.

So yeah, I'm as shocked as you.

I understand the whole tobacco product thi has to do with it generally being refined from tobacco. Full synthetic is possible though, and was threatened at one point. A full synthetic would not be a “tobacco product” even though it would be chemically identical. Iirc it had to do with tax rates. As taxes increase retail prices go up. Synthetic is more expensive, but if the taxes get too high it becomes cheaper to do synthetic and avoid the taxes which effectively puts a cap on them the state is incentivized to keep below.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

I doubt many people that watch this thread use the Kanger Evod/Protank MT32 coils but I love them for tootle puffing and my whole tootle puffing stash is based around that one coil. I use it in more than just Evods and I use it in a few non-Kanger tanks with simple and easy modifications. The downside is that these coil heads only last me 4-7 days, but I think I might have figured out how to increase their longevity.

I use the newer SOCC version, which is the same as the original MT32 coil head except it uses cotton instead of silica rope for the wick. So I decided to do some trials with some simple mods to the coil.

First, I turned the the silicone cup seal upside-down. It seems to me that cup seal isn't needed with the cotton wick (or the silica wick for that matter). I think the cup seal installed as it is from the factory may choke the cotton, causing the wick to get a bit too dry and leading to premature death of the coil head. There is no void leading into the chamber with the cup seal off so I see no reason for the cup seal, just a 6mm wide, 1mm thick silicone washer would do the trick to seal the chimney to the chamber.

In addition to turning the cup seal around, I took a needle and very delicately combed the tails of the cotton to make it possibly wick better. The cotton is packed super tight in these tiny coil heads!

So 2 weeks ago today I started both a 1.5 ohm and 1.8 ohm coil and so far so good. I do sometimes get slightly dry tasting hits when the juice is cold, but very minimal. I keep my house colder than most people. Also no flooding/gurgling as a result of the mods.

2 weeks on the SOCC/MT32 coil at 7.5W-8W, for me, is a record and neither of these coils are showing any sign of performance, vapor or taste degradation yet. That's with 15mg, 50/50, clear juice at 7% flavor (6% FW Candy Cane & 1% INW Coolada). Been using them almost exclusively the whole time (I do need to take a 20-25W DL drag here and there on an RTA or Atlantis style coil...it just gives me a certain satisfaction I desire sometimes).

It's definitely way too early to tell if my modifications are what's causing this increase in longevity, but so far, so good. These coils are one part of my stash that is a bit anemic considering I'm hoping to do more tootle puffing now and less 20-25W vaping. So if I can get them to last longer with these simple mods, that's awesome. Now if I could get them to last 2 months like Eleaf EC and some other Atlantis style coils, that would be double awesome, but I highly doubt that can be done.

 

[mcduffy]

I just tried your idea of turning the seal on a MT32 coil rebuilt with silica that was drawing poorly, and the draw is noticeably improved.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

I just tried your idea of turning the seal on a MT32 coil rebuilt with silica that was drawing poorly, and the draw is noticeably improved.

Glad to hear it! Hopefully it stays that way for a while. If it seems to start gurgling after a while try packing 1 or 2 more silica strands in there so that the wick holes leading to the chamber are 100% blocked off with silica. But not too much.

Another benefit with the cup seal and combing mod I forgot to mention (when using the cotton MT32): it's more forgiving when I accidentally let the tank go dry and get a REALLY dry hit (which happens a lot to me with these small clearos). Withotut the mods, forget it, those coil heads are toast at that point. But you shouldn't have that problem with silica wicks, not to that degree anyhow. With the mods, so far I can revive it with no indication it ever happened by refilling the tank and giving it a few primer puffs.

 

[Rossum]

So I guess the takeaway here is that PCB components and screens can indeed go bad in storage.

Mech mods FTW!

A little polishing compound or Sunshine Cloth on the various bits that make contact they'll work good as new, no matter how long they've been in storage.