Dripper's Best Friend!

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quasimod

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Oct 19, 2009
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Joplin, MO - USA
The Johnson Creek ePump "mod" (in the loosest possible sense of the word "mod" :))
With only a couple of small, SIMPLE modifications,
The Johnson Creek ePump (link) can be turned into a Dripper's Best Friend! I know that $15 seems high for a little plastic pump bottle, but mine has saved me a LOT more than $15 worth of aggravation!

There is no cap to unscrew/replace and fuss with. The little nozzle fits into an atty or drip tip, so you don't have to carefully aim it. A pump-stroke gives a fairly consistent amount of juice each time, so no more counting drops. I can pick mine up, drip 2 drops with one press, put it down, and be vaping within 3 seconds. I can do this in complete darkness, without looking, while concentrating on another activity like driving (of course, I only do this on a closed course, supervised by a qualified stunt director, and with emergency medical personnel and equipment standing by! ;-))


It is actually just a well-made pump bottle inside an attractive red acrylic "holder".

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At first, I thought the outer shell was merely a functionally useless attachment meant to improve the appearance of the bottle. After using it for a bit, I see that it actually has at least these 2 functions:

1) It keeps the pump from getting depressed accidentally when it's in your pocket

2) It has a flat bottom, so it will stand up (the bottom of the pump bottle is hemispherical, so the tube sucks up almost every drop, but it wont stand up for refilling!).

The small one holds 15 ml, and the big one holds 40 ml. I have the "small" one, which is already too freaking big to carry around in your pocket comfortably. It's so darn handy, I carry it anyway, and sometimes I just drop the inner bottle into my shirt pocket. For size comparison, here it is next to an 18650 battery and my GGTS:

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Unmodified, each pump-stroke puts out about 4 or 5 drops of juice, and that's way too much for dripping! I made a small modification to the pump-shaft-tube-thingy, so it only puts out 2 drops. There are two ways I can think of to limit the pump stroke, so it puts out the amount of liquid that you like.

1) You can put small plastic or metal washers over the tube that the cap fits onto. This is probably both the safest and the best method, since it does no permanent damage to the tube and can be adjusted easily by adding/removing/changing types of washers. The little silicone gaskets inside of a cartomizer fit this tube perfectly, but since they are soft there is a little more variance in the pump stroke.

2) You can cut a small amount (no more than 1/8") off of that same tube. Use a very sharp razor knife, because that plastic is hard. It will "give" all at once, with a quick "snap", so be very careful if you decide to do it this way. This is what I did with my pump, mostly because I didn't think of the washer idea first. :oops: Once you cut the tube, there is no turning back. If you botch this, and cut off too much, the pump will be ruined. I got lucky!

The arrow in the following picture points to the part of the tube you will need to cut, or put washers onto:

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One more thing: The inner bottle can be difficult to remove. The odd-looking protruding shoulder of the pump bottle rests on raised ridges (marked by the red arrows in the following picture). There are very small, difficult to see "bumps" (marked by the green arrows) above the level of these bracing ridges. You can easily feel them with a finger. The shoulder of the bottle snaps past these bumps, and wedges firmly between them and the bracing ridges. Mine was held too firmly! It was a pain to remove the bottle, and half the time the cap would pop off and I had to use pliers to remove the bottle (don't grab the tube with pliers, pinch the outer edge of the cap with needle-nosed pliers and wiggle it out). To avoid this, I used very fine sandpaper to sand down those little bumps (green "HERE" arrows). I intended to make them "just right", but I went too far. Now my bottle falls out whenever it's turned upside down. No big deal to me, but it may be to you, so proceed slowly and test often.

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I AM ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A SMALLER, CHEAPER, BETTER PUMP BOTTLE WITH A NOZZLE! If you find one, please PM me and let me know about it!
 
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