Houston, we have a problem...BE nic titration results

[tmcase]

Here it is:

Due to recent events, we want to offer an Unlimited Satisfaction Guarantee for all of our products from Box Elder Chemical Supply. If any of our customers are dissatisfied with any of our products regardless of when they were purchased we will offer a full refund, including the cost of return shipping to us.
We realize the importance and nature of the products that we sell and we want to assure the community that we are continually striving for transparency and accuracy in our own business operations as well as this industry as a whole.
We do ask that before you ship a product back to us that you contact us at customerservice@boxelderchemicalsupply.com or call 888-962-5877.

Please have the date of purchase or the order ID number and we will be more than willing to issue a Return Merchandise Authorization Number.
We also ask that if you return a product to us that you do so via the US Postal Service and that you send the product via Flat Rate Priority Mail to my personal address:
Brad Bacher
1170 Sycamore Dr.
Brigham City, Utah
84302
Any refunds will be issued within 24 hours of the date of an arrival of product back to our facility. We apologize for any mistakes that could have been made and we can only extend our promise to improve the quality of our products and performance of our duties to our community of friends and customers.

Sincerely,
Brad Bacher
Box Elder Chemical Supply

 

[sparky604]

True I have not tested Levy's juice. Levy runs his own titrations, this has been known for a long time. DVap tested his as well. My aim is to not necessarily promote vendors like an advertisement, but to point out those that have been testing all along. And perhaps those that start. That is the point of all of this: who produces nic at truthful values?

If we do not find out who we can trust, what is the point of all this I am going through right now??

The thing is, why are we willing to take Levy's (or other people's) word as being trustworthy? Based on what? A paragraph about how he didn't like the colour of nicotine he got in a shipment? (Who knows what happened, maybe he wanted to go hunting for a week and made it up! j/k) Until the beginning of November, Box Elder's rep was stellar and they said they tested all their batches as well...

 

[oldsoldier]

ECF allowed the other BE emails to be posted. I think their policy is that we can't post emails from ECF forum suppliers but since BE was never a forum supplier it should be alright.

Not quite right but close under the circumstances. The ruling is to respect privacy. A mass mailing has no such expectation of privacy.

To further clarify: you can quote snippets or paraphrase a personal communication, but you may not release the entire communication or a substantial portion of said personal communication without the permission of the other party. Think along the lines of privacy and then consider something very similar to the "fair use" policy for copyrighted material and you cannot go wrong. Just do not divulge personal information or private contact information and you are generally fine. When in doubt err on the side of privacy, because the line can be a thin one.

I hope this explanation has helped.

 

[tmcase]

Thanks for the clarification. You've made it very clear.

 

[kerb]

I too had gotten some nic juice that had something wrong with it. Now I am relatively new to vaping, so didn't realize what was going on. But it was more of a yellowy colour and much stronger odour than what I was use to. When I mixed it I couldn't even vape it at all was very strong and very chemical tasting to me.............I assumed it was that I mixed way too much flavouring into it..........to make a long story short, I ended up diluting it by three times what I usually do......figuring it was still the flavouring. When done diluting it down three times I am able to vape it but now back to adding at least half the flavouring I added in the first place. Hmmm when I first tried this nic.......my initial thought was that it was way too strong..........................if I am right with all my calculations.............I started with 36mg............thought I was mixing it down to 18mg (which I could not vape.....felt very harsh and made me dizzy with a headache).........now my final stuff that I am able to vape is roughly (or should be if it started out at 36mg) about 6mg and it still feels somewhat strong.... but not the chemical taste. With that being said I am use to between 15 and 20mg. So doesn't make sense that all of a sudden I am happy with 6mg. However does make me much more careful about vaping, when I don't think something is not right. Haha and to think I even posted this a couple of weeks ago when it happened that my ADV all of a sudden tasted very horrible.........glad I found a way to get it back.


I know where some of the bottles came from (the ones I ordered myself), but the two bottles that are very off colour I got from a private seller and I am not sure if this seller mixes them or orders them for reselling (they do however have labels on them.

I have not read all of the posts in this particular thread but did read all the post in the previous one, where people had thought they got too strong a juice.

I have two questions...................................where is box elders located are they in china or the united states? And does strong nic have a chemical smell to it?...........the only way I can describe it is very chemical tasting and smelling, kind of leaves a hint of garlic taste in your throat....................reminds me of when they are putting you under anesethic for an operation. I know my juices came from China but where does BE get theirs from?

 

[GoodDog]

I find it odd he wants the returns sent to his "personal address". Is it just another spin to make us think he has a facility and really doesn't? It's hard to know what to believe. He said he had 2 facilities but like someone else said one could be a bedroom and one could be a kitchen. LOL

 

[Switched]

True I have not tested Levy's juice. Levy runs his own titrations, this has been known for a long time. DVap tested his as well. My aim is to not necessarily promote vendors like an advertisement, but to point out those that have been testing all along. And perhaps those that start. That is the point of all of this: who produces nic at truthful values?

If we do not find out who we can trust, what is the point of all this I am going through right now??

@ mauzey

As Kurt explained Levy's liquid is tested, he was my sole supplier before he stopped shipping to Canada because of our current regs. As I have not seen other nicotine from other sources I do not know what nic looks like as the liquid from Levy was crystal clear with the exception of the pink liquid he once had (remnants of extraction chemicals reacted with the dilutants. That liquid was independently tested and proven safe and sold at a reduced rate. He never used that source again.

 

[salemgold]

I find it odd he wants the returns sent to his "personal address". Is it just another spin to make us think he has a facility and really doesn't? It's hard to know what to believe. He said he had 2 facilities but like someone else said one could be a bedroom and one could be a kitchen. LOL

Thanks! I needed a laugh LOL

 

[Switched]

I find it odd he wants the returns sent to his "personal address". Is it just another spin to make us think he has a facility and really doesn't? It's hard to know what to believe. He said he had 2 facilities but like someone else said one could be a bedroom and one could be a kitchen. LOL

I like the post about marketing phrases, wouldn't surprise me one bit that is what is going on.

 

[curiousJan]

And does strong nic have a chemical smell to it?...........the only way I can describe it is very chemical tasting and smelling, kind of leaves a hint of garlic taste in your throat....................reminds me of when they are putting you under anesethic for an operation. I know my juices came from China but where does BE get theirs from?

Yes, to me it tastes (and sometimes smells) peppery.

"private seller"? ... not asking for names, but do you mean you got it from a smaller vendor or bought it directly from another vaper?

If I were you, I'd be contacting Kurt to have that liquid tested (or doing it myself in some manner) before vaping another drop!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jan

 

[tmcase]

I have two questions...................................where is box elders located are they in china or the united states? And does strong nic have a chemical smell to it?...........the only way I can describe it is very chemical tasting and smelling, kind of leaves a hint of garlic taste in your throat....................reminds me of when they are putting you under anesethic for an operation. I know my juices came from China but where does BE get theirs from?

BE is located in the US. The strong nic can have many different smells. It kind of depends on each person. But Kurt said it might smell like dirty feet or fishy. I have some 100ml that Kurt is testing and it smells like tar to me. Everybody's taste and smell is different.

 

[kinabaloo]

I have two questions...................................where is box elders located are they in china or the united states? And does strong nic have a chemical smell to it?...........the only way I can describe it is very chemical tasting and smelling, kind of leaves a hint of garlic taste in your throat....................reminds me of when they are putting you under anesethic for an operation. I know my juices came from China but where does BE get theirs from?

Pure nic (999mg) is from China and apparently high quality. All the dilutions are done by BE. BE is in the US somewhere.

+++

Strange that term you used 'strong chemical taste' rings bells - I've seen quite a few posts making this complaint over the 2 months. Might be worth looking back at them ...

 

[Kurt]

That was a reassuring exercise!

Yesterday evening, in reaction to all the hoo-raw over Box Elder, I took my stash of high-test, unflavored nicquid bottles out of the freezer, where they've been at zero to minus ten degrees F., to warm them up to room temperature. (About half of the bottles are VG, which gets really gooey at Siberian temperatures. Also, I don't know if icy-cold temperatures affect the test, whereas I know it works fine at room temperature.)

This evening, I tested every bottle of high-test with the eBay kit. (I had tested five of them with the eBay kit before I sent them off to the freezer, just to make sure of my lab technique and the test procedure itself.)

The five I had tested before came out this time to a few percent (generally, five percent) of what I had recorded before. All, from various vendors, were within 10 percent of stated strength on the label. All of the others in my stash tested to within 10 percent of label strength. These included both PG and VG vehicles.

I had one bottle of untested BE labelled as 48 mg. which I had not tested before. There's no lot number on it, only a CAS number. Today it tested a tad high, at 55 mg. I tested it twice and got the same result both times. It's a keeper, though. It's only about 15% high, it smells "good" and it's just a pale yellow tick away from colorless. You can't see it as pale yellow unless you compare it to distilled water in an identical graduated cylinder. I made a note on the label that it tested at 55 mg./ml.

One thing I discovered while running all those tests is that 2 drops of bromothymol blue is really not enough to reliably see the final color change from pale green to pale yellow. Six drops works much better because the colors are more concentrated and it's easier to see the change.

Very good experiment, and it does answer my question about cold making nic concentrate or come out of solution. For the life of me I couldn't see this happening, but had not tested it yet. Kin and I were discussing it. It MIGHT if it freezes solid, but mine certainly does not in the freezer. I think this supports the premise that once nic is in solution, and it remains liquid, it does not come out. My MFS that I tested was also from the freezer, and not agitated a lot before testing. Entropy should not go backwards when the dissolving is spontaneous.

Do not use too much indicator, however. It is a weak acid itself, and too much will affect the end point volume. Which way depends on the indicator and what you are titrating, but this is a general rule of thumb. Amount of base being titrated is also important, and if the In amount is comparable to the base, it really changes things. Two drops should be all you use, even if BB is a difficult end point to see.

BTW, end point is where the color changes. Equivalence point is where the base has been titrated exactly completely. These two can be rather different depending on these details. But excellent work. Thank you for this!!

 

[Iffy]

He said he had 2 facilities but like someone else said one could be a bedroom and one could be a kitchen.

"The CEO" said the two facilities were 30 miles part...

 

[Paradisevap]

I agree with everything kurt says but the instructions tell you to use more (4 drops) when testing higher nic because of how much acid it takes dilutes the blue to where its almost clear. Kurt have you had a chance to try the "ebay Test" yet ?

Very good experiment, and it does answer my question about cold making nic concentrate or come out of solution. For the life of me I couldn't see this happening, but had not tested it yet. Kin and I were discussing it. It MIGHT if it freezes solid, but mine certainly does not in the freezer. I think this supports the premise that once nic is in solution, and it remains liquid, it does not come out. My MFS that I tested was also from the freezer, and not agitated a lot before testing. Entropy should not go backwards when the dissolving is spontaneous.

Do not use too much indicator, however. It is a weak acid itself, and too much will affect the end point volume. Which way depends on the indicator and what you are titrating, but this is a general rule of thumb. Amount of base being titrated is also important, and if the In amount is comparable to the base, it really changes things. Two drops should be all you use, even if BB is a difficult end point to see.

BTW, end point is where the color changes. Equivalence point is where the base has been titrated exactly completely. These two can be rather different depending on these details. But excellent work. Thank you for this!!

 

[Kurt]

BE is located in the US. The strong nic can have many different smells. It kind of depends on each person. But Kurt said it might smell like dirty feet or fishy. I have some 100ml that Kurt is testing and it smells like tar to me. Everybody's taste and smell is different.

Smells I get:

BE: sharp, but slight.
MFS: pungent and more vaporous, round, sweeter, aromatic
RTS (just got a sample) and Vermont Vapor: popcorn-like!

I have found nic smells vary considerably at the same concentration, and are different from person to person. The 272 mg was like a popcorn storm, interestingly enough. I smelled it as soon as I started to unscrew it.

 

[Paradisevap]

[/B]

Thanks! I needed a laugh LOL

HMMMMMM ck'd my box ........... It came from box elder at the same address

 

[Kurt]

I agree with everything kurt says but the instructions tell you to use more (4 drops) when testing higher nic because of how much acid it takes dilutes the blue to where its almost clear. Kurt have you had a chance to try the "ebay Test" yet ?

No, I haven't, and I should. If for no other reason than to help guide people. I understand the kit well enough, but I have the equipment that the kit is doing a crude approximation of. I'm not trying to be snobbish, honestly.

What would happen with the kit if you dilute the original liquid to have the concentration with DI water, then back calculate at the end? Does that help with the endpoint?

 

[pinellaspete]

From what I learned from the Vaping Show the other night:

All nicotine used for vaping originates in China. To purchase USA made nicotine would be prohibitively expensive. Resellers like Box Elder purchase the pure nicotine, dilute it with PG or VG and then resell it at lower nicotine concentrations.

I have been reading e-juice websites more closely lately and found that many dance around this issue. They might say something like "Nicotine is sourced from USA vendors only." Is that the truth? Well...BE is a USA vendor, but the nicotine comes from China. I think that is skating on thin ice and while it may be the truth, it certainly isn't the whole truth!

Pete

 

[Paradisevap]

uumm not sure did you get the instruction link I sent pm while you where on cozzz's show ?