Do you like money? Why everyone *should* DIY.

[Halfzipp]

Sorry for being a bit of a necro =p, but I just had to bump this. Its a great thread and answers quite a few questions.

I also think this should definitely be stickied.

EDIT:

err, i guess it wasnt that old, but it was back a few pages.

 

[AnglVapin]

Cutting it down brought it down to a 'i can use it without crying' level.

Oh, I love this! LMAO...but sooooo true!

 

[AnglVapin]

You'd use roughly 25% of the 36mg Menthol juice, and 75% of something else. I wouldn't go 75% glycerine, it would be too thick. Maybe 25% menthol juice, 35% PG, and 40% glycerine. I'm not sure how the flavor would hold up being diluted that much though. I'll try it, and let you know.

If it works, you'd be cutting your cost per bottle down 75%. Each 1 oz would cost around $8 instead of $30.

I tried something similar Walrus, except I used 15% PG, 50% VG, and 10% Distilled water.... and it is fantastic. Just the right "I can vape it without crying" mixture for me. I alter the PG and VG if I want a lower strength nic and the flavor is fine. And so far, it is working fine with my atty.

Been experimenting with more VG lately. My spare room has been turned into a chemist lab! LOL

 

[abudman]

Well Walrus, I'd say you got another N00b hooked, just got my first Ecig on Monday and made my first batch of Juice today. Your posts here and across the forums have been a big help and a huge inspiration.

 

[Flitzanu]

i finally read through this thread, Walrus. always good stuff reading your replies, hehe.

btw, about the Glycerin, did you ever find it cheaper than 10 bucks for 16oz or whatever? i saw some next to the PG i bought at the feed store, USP glycerin for $22 a gallon as well. i'm sure you did, you wrote this a long time ago

 

[Walrus]

i finally read through this thread, Walrus. always good stuff reading your replies, hehe.

btw, about the Glycerin, did you ever find it cheaper than 10 bucks for 16oz or whatever? i saw some next to the PG i bought at the feed store, USP glycerin for $22 a gallon as well. i'm sure you did, you wrote this a long time ago

Sure did.. $3.65 for 16oz, $10.75 for half gallon, $16 for a gallon:

Glycerin, Vegetable (Kosher USP) - Bulk - Wholesale

They also have PG. Not as cheaply as my other source, but if you are buying both you save on the shipping versus two sources.

BTW, I saw the other thread, and I'm researching before posting...

Well Walrus, I'd say you got another N00b hooked, just got my first Ecig on Monday and made my first batch of Juice today. Your posts here and across the forums have been a big help and a huge inspiration.

Welcome and enjoy!

I tried something similar Walrus, except I used 15% PG, 50% VG, and 10% Distilled water.... and it is fantastic. Just the right "I can vape it without crying" mixture for me. I alter the PG and VG if I want a lower strength nic and the flavor is fine. And so far, it is working fine with my atty.

Been experimenting with more VG lately. My spare room has been turned into a chemist lab! LOL

I've never had call for distilled water, even though I keep a gallon of it on hand. I suppose I'd use it in an all-VG mix to thin it... but I haven't yet.

Enjoy your lab!

 

[deeptrout]

So here is a stupid question, how would i go about getting say a 20oz bottle of 36nic juice? or hell even a gallon bottle of unflavored nic juice?

the reason i ask is i would love to just go all mad scientist on this stuff and come up with tons of recipes and if some of them are good enough maybe even sell them.

Yes i understand the amount of care required in mixing what is essentially poison and know how to maintain a sterile and safe labaratory environment. i jsut have no clue how to contact a wholesaler to get the nic juice to start playing. any suggestions?

 

[Walrus]

So here is a stupid question, how would i go about getting say a 20oz bottle of 36nic juice? or hell even a gallon bottle of unflavored nic juice?

the reason i ask is i would love to just go all mad scientist on this stuff and come up with tons of recipes and if some of them are good enough maybe even sell them.

Yes i understand the amount of care required in mixing what is essentially poison and know how to maintain a sterile and safe labaratory environment. i jsut have no clue how to contact a wholesaler to get the nic juice to start playing. any suggestions?

It's fairly easy, but not at all convenient. I bought 1.15 liters from Boge. It was $65 for the liquid, $48.00 for shipping, and $25 for Western Union... or $138 for the bottle. Still a good deal.

The process went something like this:

Go to the website http://www.bogetech.com and click on the chat box on the upper right corner.

Ask the sales rep to send you a price listing.

Email the rep back what you'd like to order.

They will email you back an invoice, and payment instructions.

You have a choice of bank transfer or Western Union. Bank transfers take 3-5 days... oh, and then they have your banking information...

I Western Unioned the money ($25 fee) and followed the instructions for notifying them of the payment.

Receive an email confirmation.

Wait for shipping.

I think it took about a week for me to have it in my hands... it cleared customs in one day.

 

[rinkusu]

It's fairly easy, but not at all convenient. I bought 1.15 liters from Boge. It was $65 for the liquid, $48.00 for shipping, and $25 for Western Union... or $138 for the bottle. Still a good deal.

Hi Walrus,

And this was for the non-flavored nic juice?

 

[Walrus]

Hi Walrus,

And this was for the non-flavored nic juice?

Non-flavored, or various flavors. They don't carry 36mg anymore though. Hardly anyone does... if you can find it at a supplier, buy it... ain't no more coming I don't think.

 

[rinkusu]

Non-flavored, or various flavors. They don't carry 36mg anymore though. Hardly anyone does... if you can find it at a supplier, buy it... ain't no more coming I don't think.

Right on, thanks. Compiling my list of suppliers for nic juice, PG and glycerin. Going to be making my own soon.

 

[rickstar009]

Did someone mention money!? **Drool**

 

[Applejackson]

That is really encouraging information as I plan to use mine mainly for 0 nic vapor, and low nic for nights out drinking (when the craving gets bad). As it stands I don't smoke when I haven't had a couple drinks anymore (Chantix worked for me, but a lot of people hate it), but I desperately miss the hand-to-mouth/security blanket feel during a lot of "trigger" activities. Will be receiving my TITAN in the mail in the next day or two. Really excited about it.

 

[wjmcspirit]

but it's just all too much for me. I like it simple. LOL

Yeah, me too... hell I don't even cook. If I had to I would starve... If I can't open it from a bag, a box or a can and eat it, it's not happening.

 

[LisaLisa]

Walrus, I"m a newbie. Can you please tell me where I can buy the TW Menthol that you recommend?

 

[Scottes]

TW is Totally Wicked.
UK Site: Electronic Cigarette e-liquid / Totally Wicked e-Liquids / Electronic Cigarette e-liquid shop
US Site: Electronic Cigarettes and eLiquid / Totally Wicked eLiquid / Electronic Cigarette eLiquid Store

 

[Scottes]

I did an analysis of the costs of DIY using several different vendors' nic-juices. Using their prices - not including shipping - I computed the costs to make a 30ml bottle at various strengths.


Some conditions:

I did not go to the ends of the earth to find every single vendor at every single strength for every single price. I did not intend to pick on any vendor, or highlight any. I just grabbed a number of vendors that I knew carried flavorless e-juice.

Top (non-bulk) rows assume LorAnn flavoring at 20%, purchased in 1 dram bottles for $1.59 each, and PG purchases in 4oz bottles for $5.

Bulk rows assume LorAnn flavoring at 20%, purchased in 4oz bottles for $14 each, and PG purchased in 1 gallon bottles for $20.

"NA" means that this mixture is not available, since it's not possible to make a final product at this strength using a nic-juice of this strength. That is, by the time flavoring is added to this strength of nic-juice the final product will be a lower strength than desired.

Note that your flavor strength, and desire for some VG for vapor production, can affect whether or not you can make some of these final 30ml bottles. If you use a weak flavor and need to use 50% flavoring, then you're not going to be able to make 24mg final product if you use 36mg nic-juice.


All costs listed do not include shipping!
This is particularly important when comparing the bulk Best Ecig (shipping = $16) vs My Freedom Smokes (shipping = $6).

Including shipping is kinda impossible. For instance, nobody would buy a single 30ml bottle from China and pay $16 to ship a $9 bottle of nic-juice. And you pay the same shipping price for either 1 bottle of nic-juice or 5 bottles. If you buy 10 bottles maybe you get free shipping. Or you might use a discount code... So the prices shown are the base prices - no shipping, no discounts. Adjust the final number accordingly.


Screenshots:

The spreadsheet can be found here so you can plug in your numbers if you wish - or check my math/formulas if you wish to do that.

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/DIY_Costs.xls

 

[kc0cmp]

An economics lesson.

I'll use Totally Wicked as my example. I do this because they are my favorite and if you can't pick on those you love, who can you? It also helps this example that they are also the most expensive. You can substitute the numbers used for what you pay.

30ml is roughly one fluid ounce. A gallon is 128 fluid ounces. A 30ml bottle from TW (any strength, 0-36) costs roughly $30. Therefore, a gallon of TW liquid would cost $3840. No typo... three thousand eight hundred and forty dollars. A gallon of Propylene Glycol costs $22.

My typical percentage of Lorann's flavorings in my recipes runs around 20%. So... to flavor that gallon of PG, I'd use roughly 25 ounces of Lorann's. Roughly 6.4 bottles (4 oz). Almost all of their flavors cost $13 for a 4 oz bottle. Soooo, now we have $83.20 in flavoring costs.

Hold the phones... we've just increased what our store-bought e-juice would have cost us. In adding the flavoring, we now actually have 153 ounces of our DIY liquid. That's now $4590 worth of TW liquids, for a DIY cost of $105. Savvy?

You don't save as much if you aren't into the 0-nic stuff... but using the same info above... if you are into say... 18mg liquid. Buy the 36mg instead! By cutting it with PG, you still save thousands of dollars.

I purposefully left Glycerine out of the discussion just to keep it simple. Glycerine is $9.50 for 16 ounces (from the right source), and I use maybe 35-40% in my recipes. It's not necessary.

Let's sum things up:

Cost per Gallon (0 Nic)

DIY - PG $88
DIY - Glycerine $133
TW $3840


A little more perspective... that 30ml bottle for $30? The same just cost you 68 cents to make yourself.

Any questions?

yeah one question:
tell me how to get liquid down to $88-$133 containing say 24mg nic (what i vape almost exclusively unless im in a "killsomeonenow" mode in which case i vape 36...

Cant cut 36 50/50 with glycerin or PG cause while it *does* knock you down to 18mg nic, it reduces flavor by 50% (more at the tastebud end in my opinion)... That's the real issue. If we could get the nic (or some like 500mg nic/pg juice to cut) then savings out the wazoo (as if you could get extremely high nic content juice cheap..i say again EXTREMELY HIGH content or it wouldn't really be a saver) and some flavorings and whoop up the whole batch from scratch.

I can't do 0 nic..and i'd wager maybe less than 25% here do (i'd estimate it closer to 1-5% here use 0 nic)

now if we could get some 200-500mg nic liquid dirt cheap..and some loranns flavor to mix with our dirt cheap OTC pg/humco we'd be set..but unfortunately we cant

I'm confident the reason they don't sell that insecticide grade nic is that some fool would vape it straight up and go into convultions LOL..but it still kills the money train..just like cutting 36 to 18 kills the flavor train

*pouts*

 

[Scottes]

I don't understand - you're reducing the strength of pre-made, but complaining that the flavor becomes too weak when you do that?

Just ignore the pre-made, and make it all yourself. 11 cents per ml - maybe 12 or 13 cents if you want your flavoring stronger.

 

[foebea]

Thanks much for the info here. I grabbed a 250ml of 48 from mfs to be shipped monday. Got VG from wholefoods and will be picking up a variety of flavors when shops open monday.

I'm hoping to wean myself off the nic over the next year that it takes me to get through this stock If I dilute the 48 to 12 for normal use with occaisional 24, the total daily cost is insanely low. Planning on getting to 6mg by spring.