Hello from Germany

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tailland

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Hey there. Call me Chris. I'm 43, from Germany.

Tried converting to Ecigs 4y ago, was talked into buying some Ego-Whatever thing for 60 Euros (~70$) by a local vendor - a device which I used a few times and finally threw it into the trash because it didn't satisfy my urges.
Fast forward to June 9th 2018, my Ego AIO Pro C arrives, together with a variety of coils to test, and from one day to another, I converted from heavy cig smoking (20years) to vaping 0.5ohm DL minty nicotine juice. Haven't even contemplated smoking another cig since. DL for the win. MTL is not for me.

Up to now, I've bought:

Hardware: Ego AIO Pro C, EVic VTwo Mini with Cubis Pro (the real (=non-TPD mutilated) one), Kangertech CLTank 4.0, 2 x Joyetech ESpion with Procore X arrived yesterday (blue and black :), and a Cuboid Pro with Procore Aries is still on the way. I simply couldn't resist buying these things, given they were all on "clearance sale" with absurdely low prices. And of course I've bought some small accessory as well, like different drip tips, beautiful cases for the hardware, silicone skins, etc...

Software: first a small battery of mint nicotine 10ml bottles -.-, then a 100ml bubblegum taste bottle with nic shots, and finally I've bought 3litres of cheap nic base (6mg) along with more than a dozen of highly concentrated flavors to mix. What I found slighlty disconcerting, was that most of the flavors I bought, all of whose brands are recommended by experienced vapers, contain a tiny amount of fatty oils (not just essential oils) although they're only advertised as containing only PG as a solvent. The "blotter test" quickly unmasks that lie. I'd certainly appreciate seeing a "whitelist" being built one day.

What I love about vaping:
First and foremost, of course, that it stopped me from abusing cigarettes. I had the feeling smoking cigs was really dragging my health down. Since I stopped, it's steadily going uphill. It's hard to overstate how much I love that fact.

Besides that, I find the entire industry to be quite consumer friendly. To me, it looks like the industry is largely doing what the customers want, and that the products reflect their price tags pretty well. Of course it's a big bonus that many parts are standardised, and even interchangable between different manufacturers (coils, tank glasses,...). Given its importance in the fight against big tobacco, this is certainly a huge plus.

Ok, that's enough about me.
 

ichimaru

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tailland

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My crystal ball sees you in future holding a good old German Svoe Mesto Kayfun atty, wrapping your own coils and wicking cotton
I can muster some enthusiasm for that newfound vaping thing, but I already know that some things aren't going to happen for me because they're located too deeply in the hobbyist/collector realm.
Buying a $150 RTA instead of a $30 one firmly belongs in that category. I also don't believe the vaping gets substantially better if I spend an hour wrapping up complicated coil patterns instead of buying a 100 piece batch of pre-made ones. I get why enthusiasts do it, but I'll most certainly refrain from that. The bang/buck ratio is really really high on my list of priorities.

I agree with you on the vape industry. It does seem they address our concerns, cater to our many whims, and self-regulate pretty well.
And they still innovate. I'm looking forward to mods becoming entry level standard that are sufficiently powered by AA or AAA non-lithium batteries, or devices that use ultrasonic evaporation technology. Or whatever other good stuff they're developing in their labs.
 

Bradder

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Glad you are here. A great place for like-minded folks.
 
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Sugar_and_Spice

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Hey there. Call me Chris. I'm 43, from Germany.
What I found slighlty disconcerting, was that most of the flavors I bought, all of whose brands are recommended by experienced vapers, contain a tiny amount of fatty oils (not just essential oils) although they're only advertised as containing only PG as a solvent. The "blotter test" quickly unmasks that lie. I'd certainly appreciate seeing a "whitelist" being built one day.

What brand are these flavors. Flavor makers always have who they are. PG is mostly used as a carrier oil in the flavorings unless the make has vg only on the label.

The oily looking blotter is from PG. Try the same blotter test with plain PG. Is there a difference between the one with flavoring and the PG?
 

tailland

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What brand are these flavors.
Most of what I bought so far, though not all, comes from Inawera, a producer that is held in high regards by the vapers here. Their flavor basis is E1520 (PG).

Personally, I have tried the following on paper:
- Ethanol/Water/Essential oils mixture - evaporated without any residue within 1 minute
- PG based nic shot - takes a little longer to dry out (sped up with a hair dryer), dries out with no residue.
- PG based flavors - out of the 15 I have here, only 5 dried out completely without residue (hair dryer), the others left shiny thumbnails of different intensity when held against a light source. The most intense were Cola (smells like citrus cleaning agent) and Banana, while the others were much less intense.

Preliminary conclusion: Either they got undeclared VG in it as well, OR the flavors contain traces of fatty oils. I haven't done a long term test to give them more time to dry out. I should have.

I found this related image of someone else doing a test (although it's older and it wasn't stated who the manufacturers are)
IMG_20130916_162724.jpg

I would've thought that Zitrone(Lemon) and Limette(Lime) would show equally aggressive results, but they don't. Some flavors leave visibly colorful residues while others dry up without any stains. Since nothing was posted about the manufacturer(s?), it's hard to tell whether it's the flavor type itself that causes problems, or differences in the manufacturers' production processes. A follow-up post by the tester says that after a week, only garlic and cinamon remained exactly that way. Overall result: Inconclusive, except for those 2 flavors.
 

Sugar_and_Spice

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Most of what I bought so far, though not all, comes from Inawera, a producer that is held in high regards by the vapers here. Their flavor basis is E1520 (PG).

Personally, I have tried the following on paper:
- Ethanol/Water/Essential oils mixture - evaporated without any residue within 1 minute
- PG based nic shot - takes a little longer to dry out (sped up with a hair dryer), dries out with no residue.
- PG based flavors - out of the 15 I have here, only 5 dried out completely without residue (hair dryer), the others left shiny thumbnails of different intensity when held against a light source. The most intense were Cola (smells like citrus cleaning agent) and Banana, while the others were much less intense.

Preliminary conclusion: Either they got undeclared VG in it as well, OR the flavors contain traces of fatty oils. I haven't done a long term test to give them more time to dry out. I should have.

I found this related image of someone else doing a test (although it's older and it wasn't stated who the manufacturers are)
IMG_20130916_162724.jpg

I would've thought that Zitrone(Lemon) and Limette(Lime) would show equally aggressive results, but they don't. Some flavors leave visibly colorful residues while others dry up without any stains. Since nothing was posted about the manufacturer(s?), it's hard to tell whether it's the flavor type itself that causes problems, or differences in the manufacturers' production processes. A follow-up post by the tester says that after a week, only garlic and cinamon remained exactly that way. Overall result: Inconclusive, except for those 2 flavors.
Unfortunately, some flavoring still has dyes in them. But vendors are learning the vape world really does not want to inhale those.

INW is a good company to use. As a test you could up the % to 10 % in one of your recipes, just a 5-10 ml bottle to see if you can then taste while vaping as tank or two.

Nothing about diy is fast except if you buy those one shot flavors and even then some may need aging.

:)
 
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tailland

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Welcome and glad you joined.
The longer I vape, the more unattractive smoking has become for me too.
It's really an X/OR thing for me, since I learned that the dangers from smoking mostly don't scale with the amount you smoke. The difference between 2 cigs and 20 cigs per day is not what you'd expect. So I appreciate very much that I don't crave cigs anymore since I started vaping. Could be different.
 
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