How to start??

[hubseven]

I vape at 50/50 and 6mg/ml.

1. Is it better to get your pg/vg already pre-mixed 50/50 or get your pg and vg separately?

2. Is it better to get your nic juice with no pg or vg in it?

3. It seems as if all the flavorings have pg in them, is this correct?

4. It seems that the higher the nic strength you buy the cheaper it is, I would not want to work with 100 mg nic juice.

5. Is DIY really cheaper, I get my 30ml bottles of juice for about $10.50

6. What suppliers would be good to get nic juice, pg and vg from? What about flavorings? Who to start with?

7. My prime vape is a menthol tobacco what flavorings do I get?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Rocketman]

Contact a Nic supplier/vendor. If they have time to answer you now, they probably will have time to answer you later. E-mail or phone.

It is quite possible to do DIY 6mg/ml 50/50 for 6 to 7 cents per ml.

Try Wizardlabs.US or MyFreedomsmokes.com




and there is no need to get the highest strength to save money. Even 36mg/ml can save you over pre-mixed.

 

[canoeist]

1. Seperate. You can buy pg/vg super cheap. VG can be picked up at walmart for 3.00/6 ounces, pg is about 3.00 for 120ml.

2. Nic base will be all pg, all vg or a mixture of the 2. All in one base may be easier to understand.

3. I think so, I always figure the flavoring as part of the pg. Others will know better than me.

4. Since you are vaping at 6mg, you could use a much lower juice like 24mg or 36mg. I use 60 but am mixing to 18mg.

5. If I make 30ml @ 18mg, it costs me between 1.60 & 1.80. This does not have shipping costs in it.

6. I have bought from Wizard Labs & High Desert. RTS is highly recommended here a lot, others will chime in about suppliers.
6b. I do not have a lot of flavor experience but have used TPA & just ordered from Capellas. Capellas thread has a lot of info.

7. Best wait on someone who uses menthol !

 

[Hoosier]

1. Never heard of getting non-nic PG/VG premixed, but I think this is a personal choice.
2. I like my nic in PG, but see #1.
3. Nearly all, yes, but there are a few in VG. (Usually assume that flavoring is PG when calculating PG/VG ratio unless you have one of those few VG flavorings.)
4. Not really, I find that 60mg/ml is generally the least expensive in a mg/$ calculation.
5. Based solely on price of components, yes, DIY is cheaper like 20% of what what you are paying now. Getting equipment and components and getting recipes right will make it more expensive in the beginning. (And maybe in the long run if you cannot help yourself from buying more stuff to keep trying new things.)
6. Many good vendors for nic, PG and VG, but for just starting out, it is hard to beat Capella's for flavoring. (Easy to get a good tasting juice so worth a few more pennies.) I source my PG & VG from local stores. I get my nicotine from Xtreme Vaping and My Freedom Smokes usually.
7. Well, Cap's doesn't have that type flavorings. Those would consist of menthol and tobacco flavorings. Flavour Art and TPA/TFA are the most common sources of tobacco flavorings. Might check out Pure Vapes for small sample size FA stuff. Ecigexpress carries more than just FA and has good prices.

This reminds me that I have to blog about mixing tobaccos. I really need to find the time to sit down and do that...

 

[markfm]

The nic base will either be PG or VG base.

As a fairly low nic user, you might just want to settle in with 36 mg/ml for your nic base. GoodProphets has pretty frequent sales on their 36mg/ml, either VG or PG base. Otherwise check MyFreedomSmokes.

For non-PG-based flavorings, natures flavors Organic coffee flavoring system flavors are pretty good. In tobacco, I use perfumersapprentice tobacco blend alc (a mix of their tobacco absolute and ethyl maltol in pure grain alcohol, I believe). From them you can also get liquid menthol concentrate (or you can use plain menthol crystals, but I find the concentrate simpler, good consistency), and they have several other tobacco-oriented flavorings. FaeriesFinest has some decent non-pg mints.

I'm a high-flavor mixer, and I'll still top out at about 20% on flavorings, rarely go higher. Since you vape 50/50, you should be fine using the PG-based flavorings, too, unless you also have a strong desire to use organic flavorings (I use the NF organics because I DIY for some people with PG sensitivity).

As a 50/50 person, in the nicotine I'd probably go to the 36 mg/ml PG based -- it's thinner, simpler to work with, in general. You would be using it at 16% (5 ml per 30 of final eliquid) to achieve your desired 6 mg/ml final strength.

To keep it simple, go to GoodProphets first. Pick up some of their 36 mg/ml PG nicotine base, plus some pipettes and some of their graduated cylinders/beakers, plus empty bottles. Check out which perfumers apprentice (aka, "TPA") flavorings they have, see if they're carrying the liquid menthol concentrate and pick up some of the tobacco flavorings and any others that sound interesting. Perhaps buy a bottle of plain PG from them, too.

For VG, get it at a Rite Aid or CVS drugstore. You want Glycerin USP Skin Protectant, a squat, clear, 6 ounce bottle in the bandaids area, costs about $5. The ingredients list will only say Glycerin 99.5%.

Check out the stickies in this area, download scubabatdan's Excel calculator or one of the others mentioned and have fun

Cost? The pipettes, graduated beakers, syringes (if you chose to use them instead of pipettes) last a LONG time, with cleaning, and are pretty cheap anyhow. As a brand new person, particularly since you haven't settled in on which flavors work best for you, maybe won't get nicotine base on sale, you'll likely be paying more than I do, but even early on my DIY cost was about $4.25 per 30ml for 24mg/ml mixes at high flavor. My cost nowadays, knowing which things I like to work with, restocking on sales, etc., is under $3/30ml, and for 6 mg/ml noticeably less. So, my eliquids cost a lot less than even lower cost commercial, and I have really good consistency, control the product. DIY isn't for everyone, but if it works for you you'll get really good eliquid at really low cost.

Overall, for tobacco base flavor, my own favorite is Seedman Commercial cigarette concentrate. I use it for "real" tobacco mixes, though the TPA tobacco blend is nice for flavored things (like vanilla tobacco). Tastes vary.

(multiple good responses before mine, but I'll leave this up since I wrote it )

 

[canoeist]

I use my graduated cylinders a lot. You will eventually need them so You may want to pick up a 10ml and a 50ml when you are ordering other stuff. Wizard labs has the best price I have seen on them.

I use the 10ml one to measure then pour into the 50ml one to double check, then into a bottle. anything less than 2ml, I use a syringe.

I read a good tip somewhere here about measuring with a syringe. Pull the plunger off the bottom a little and draw ex:2.5 ml out of the bottle and add by pushing out the liquid til you get to 1.5ml and you have added exactly 1ml. Then put the remainder back into the original bottle. Just use clean needles and watch out not to cross contaminate with them. This has helped me getting small amounts a lot more precise.

 

[Tona Aspsusa]

The menthol is very easy to add yourself. Buy crystals, dissolve in PGA, add by the drop to your mix until satisfied.

One option that hasn't been mentioned yet wrt tobacco flavourings is to find some Hangsen concentrates (I don't know if Dekang sells their concentrates, or rather if any re-sellers sell it) in tobacco flavour-families you like.
The recommended mixing proportion is 30% concentrate, which is quite a bit higher than all other flavourings (I have used 15%, but I'm weird).

This is the really lazy, easy way to do things - the concentrates are most likely exactly what many vendors who sell Hangsen liquids (often under their own names) are using if they mix themselves, so they are sort of "all-in-one".

I smoke not-that-common (at least where I am) cigarettes, cigs that could mostly be characterized as "European in flashy boxes" (plus Kent, but only really like the original taste which hasn't been available in my area for 10+ years now), and I have been surprisingly happy with the five Hangsen concentrates I've tried so far (Kent, Davidoff, Peter Stuyvesant, Dunhill, Rothmans) - not that they taste like their analogue counterparts, but there's enough similarities to make me very satisfied.
(Obviously I have no idea if Hangsen is any good at emulating Camel or Marlboro -type flavours - it might just be a fluke that the type of taste I happen to like is well translated by them.)

Unfortunately I don't know which US-based vendors sell this type of concentrates, I got mine at http://ecigoutlet.co.uk/.