How do you measure liquid ingredients?

[Bob Chill]

This, to Me, is the Most Important thing about doing DIY.

All the Numbers are just kinda Arbitrary. I don't care if my Mix is 17.5mg/ml when it should be 18mg/ml. Or if my Flavoring is 11.732% when it should be 13%.

As long as there is Batch to Batch Repeatability, I don't care.

Pretty much the same way. I don't even use needles on my syringes except for my flavor ones. I use 1 syringe for pg/vg and 1 for nic. Depending on my batch size, I use 3/5/10/20ml syringes for PG/VG and 1-5ml for nic. I have wide mouth glass jars with 100ml capacity for my pg/vg and another 30ml for my nic. I just refill from my bigger bottles of pg/vg/nic as they get low and I can simply pour in the refills because wide mouths are hard to miss when pouring. Batch to batch consistency is always there and my tools are cheap and easy to use.

 

[28if]

Kidney puncher has Stainless 12 gage blunt tips. They're cheap and makes VG easier to deal with. When one of my solutions gets down too far to pick up with a needle, I either tip the bottle or pour it into a small 15 ml bottle and go from there.

 

[bekka]

The easiest for me so far has been to use oral dosing syringes....no needles.

 

[RamShot Rowdy]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, what are good brands for accurate beakers and graduated cyclinders?

 

[zoiDman]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, what are good brands for accurate beakers and graduated cyclinders?

I think they are All about the same Accuracy Wise.

I like to use Bomex Glassware because the Glass is a Little Thicker than some I have seen. And the Lines seem to Stay On.

Graduated Cylinder Bomex Glass - 100ml

 

[Alter]

I got some 25 and 50 ml beakers along with a bunch of needle tipped bottles from eBay. They have to come from china but I got time. I only make 20-30 mls of juice at a time so I don't need a big beaker. I have all the parts but a potentiometer and the stir magnets I'm waiting for to build a DIY magnetic stirrer and that'll help out a lot.
I just get my syringes and needles from the vet and blunt them myself.

 

[Robert Cromwell]

If my pg/vg ratio is off by a few single digit percentages it makes no difference to me as it makes no functional difference as far as I can tell. Now the flavor and nic I keep spot on with a syringe. And I carefully measure the amount of my base mix for the batch. But the PG/VG ratio not being perfect is a non issue for me.

 

[kickflipsnnollies]

If you're not getting everything out of your graduated cylinder you're being impatient. Go tell a chemist that he doesn't get all of an essential oil out of a cylinder. Mechanical loss is a thing, but it's a thing with syringes too.

 

[Capt.shay]

I think they are All about the same Accuracy Wise.

I like to use Bomex Glassware because the Glass is a Little Thicker than some I have seen. And the Lines seem to Stay On.

Graduated Cylinder Bomex Glass - 100ml

I have to disagree on that. Once I had an accurate scale and could measure out a known quantity of liquid, I found a lot of my lab ware markings were off. Some of the cheapo's I got from the E-bay were off horribly. If you can find it, genuine Corning Lab Glassware is usually pretty good but you still need to check it against a known quantity to be sure because stuff happens during printing all the time.

 

[issy]

Pouring into a syringe is just doing it wrong. You pour into a beaker, flask or graduated cylinder. Use the right tool for the right job.

And getting your base right IS important. If it's off, your entire mix will be off.

...pretty sure that a syringe is just a graduated cylinder with a hole on the bottom. Why does someone have to be "wrong?" I thought it was a great idea, and I have hundreds of hours of university lab experience. Oh well.

 

[zoiDman]

I have to disagree on that. Once I had an accurate scale and could measure out a known quantity of liquid, I found a lot of my lab ware markings were off. Some of the cheapo's I got from the E-bay were off horribly. If you can find it, genuine Corning Lab Glassware is usually pretty good but you still need to check it against a known quantity to be sure because stuff happens during printing all the time.

I probably should have Rephrased that to say All of the Name Brands I have Tried have be Accurate. Accurate for a Graduated Cylinder.

 

[Mrdaputer]

Guess it depends on how you look at it a lot of ppl look at diy as science. I prefer to look at it as a art form. I use the same flavors but like to change things up a bit maybe by just adding a few more drops to my bottle after I make a batch. I am looking for the holly grail to my taste.

 

[Tmebs]

I find myself using only my 25 ml low beaker and 10 ml cylinder and 1ml disposable pipettes most of the time.

I took a pipette and marked it ( thread and nail-polish) for a visual aid.
(I don't use the marked one, just use as a guide/reminder)

It kinda now looks like an old glass thermometer

Most of the time this works for me, especially when making such small amounts and the flavors are .1 to 1 ml

Only thing I wish I purchased was a small glass funnel....have spilled a few times

 

[Capt.shay]

Guess it depends on how you look at it a lot of ppl look at diy as science. I prefer to look at it as a art form. I use the same flavors but like to change things up a bit maybe by just adding a few more drops to my bottle after I make a batch. I am looking for the holly grail to my taste.

The problem with the mystical approach is that once you have found your Arch of the Covenant, how do you repeat it if you don't know how much of what you put in to it. This has been the downfall of many a good recipe. Accurate measurements and precise note keeping are paramount to a solid recipe. Otherwise, you are just throwing stuff in a bottle until it taste good. Maybe that is OK for you but I am waaaaaaaay to OCD to wing it that way.

 

[Mrdaputer]

The problem with the mystical approach is that once you have found your Arch of the Covenant, how do you repeat it if you don't know how much of what you put in to it. This has been the downfall of many a good recipe. Accurate measurements and precise note keeping are paramount to a solid recipe. Otherwise, you are just throwing stuff in a bottle until it taste good. Maybe that is OK for you but I am waaaaaaaay to OCD to wing it that way.

Guess you got lost I keep the same recipe that I have used for months I just tweak it to try make it better. Thus the art of juice making. I write every thing down. I hope I cleared up your misunderstanding

 

[jchisholm]

So I mixed my second batch of eliquid today, and it was a total disaster. Measuring flavorings in PG with the syringes I have is fine, but trying to draw and measure 30ml of VG with a syringe is like trying to suck a baseball through a straw. Plus as levels of PG, VG, and nicotine are getting lower in my bottles it's hard or impossible to get a needle far enough down in there to pick up any liquid. Is there a better way to measure this stuff, especially the large volume stuff like VG and PG?

I threw out nearly 80ml of PG,VG, and nicotine base today because the markings were off on the beakers I bought from MFS. I thought I had added to much of one component, being afraid I over did the nicotine I trashed the entire batch. I later discovered it was right, the beaker lines just showed more than what was actually in there...very frustrating.

Get a cheap scale from Amazon, measuring by weight is so easy. I use plastic pipettes dedicated to each flavour so no big cleanup hassles. On line (and other) recipe programs/databases (ie e-liquid-recipes) use weight as one of the options and also take into account the varying densities (mg/ml) of flavours, pg, vg etc.
Falling off a log easy and very consistent results!