Mixing By Weight: Basics 101
- Thread starter Capt.shay
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Thanks for a great thread @Capt.shay . I've been aware of mixing by weight, but I hadn't really learned much about it until today. I'm getting really tired of washing out my glass syringes, sometimes in the middle of mixing multiple flavors. As I've been stepping up my DIY game and looking to mix bigger and bigger batches, it's clear to me that mixing by weight is the way to go. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait a bit for some supplies that I ordered today to arrive, but I've already updated my DIY spreadsheets to provide me with weights in grams.
I vape from 6-12mg. I got the 12mg ready to vape cause I don't have a lot of time on my hands for mixing.
This is all new to me. I didn't have any particular recipes in mind. I bought several TFA flavors.
Yes. The area I am confused at is the calculator wants input for PG & VG but mine was bought already mixed (100%VG) so all I'd have to do is add flavoring.
The calculator, unless I'm looking at it wrong is treating my nic & VG as though they're seperate.
Just a scale (the one suggested by Shay), some squeeze bottles, and more pipettes. I should have everything else that I need. Having to avoid pulling VG up into a syringe seems to be a reason enough to move to weight for me. As I move into larger volumes I really like the squeeze bottle idea for PG and VG.
Some flavors are stronger than others. TFA flavors are often used at 5-15% as single flavors, and I've seen recipes with several flavors totaling 30% or more altogether.
Yeah, you might have a hard time with a calculator, with what you've got. You're going to have to "trick" it into giving you recipes that only take nic base and flavoring, by asking it for only very specific things some of which you'll have to work out by hand. Say you want to make a recipe with 14% flavoring (say for example, 6% Strawberry, and 8% Vanilla Bean Ice Cream*.) You plug in your recipe and your nic base (12mg 100VG 0PG) into the calculator. It asks what your target strength/ratio are. You tell it something like 6mg, 50VG 50 PG. It's going to tell you to add PG. Well you don't have any PG. How about you tell it 100VG 0PG as your target. Well, that's not going to work either, since the flavors have some PG in them, and most calculators just treat them as PG. If you ask it for 100% VG, it's going to tell you to put negative PG in the mix. How you gonna do that? So you know that since you have 14% flavoring, you have to have at least 14% PG in the mix. And you don't want to add any MORE PG, so you want to have EXACTLY 14%. Okay, so you ask it for a target of 6mg 86VG 14PG. Now it tells you to add VG. Because in order to cut your 12mg down to 6, you need to dilute it by half, or 50%. But your mix only calls for 14% flavors, so with 14% flavor and 50% nic base, you still need another 36% to fill it out. So the calculator is asking for straight VG (since you told it not to use any more PG than what was already in the flavors) to fill that 36%. Okay, so what happens if you dilute 12mg by 14%? 86% of 12 is 0.86 * 12 = 10.32. Okay, so if you take your 12mg nic base, and add ONLY 14% flavors to it, then you'll end up with 86%VG, 14%PG, and whatever 86% of 12mg is, which is 10.32. So finally, if you ask the calculator for a target of 10.32mg, 86%VG, and 14%PG, and you enter the recipe as 6% Strawberry and 8% VBIC, then it will give you a recipe with only nic base and flavorings. But at this point it might have been easier just to pull out some scratch paper and do it the old-fashioned way. 6% of 30ml, for example, is 1.8ml Strawberry flavor. 8% is 2.4ml VBIC. Add those together (4.2ml) and subtract from 30 (25.8) gives you the remaining amount of nic base you'll need. The nic strength, since you didn't buy any plain PG or VG, you don't get to decide, it just "is what it is" depending on how much flavor you add. It'll be something less than 12mg, how much less depends on how much flavor you used. In this case, we already learned earlier that it's 10.32 mg/ml since 14% flavor means 86% nic base, and so 86% of 12mg.
*edit: not my recipe, but one I found on .................... that I tried recently, simple to make and came out tasting pretty good even with only two flavors.
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Kind of exciting, isn't it? So much easier using the squeeze bottle.
I know what site you're talking about. Actually already had it up on my screen before reading your post. Thank you for the helpful info!!!!!
Add what you have, it will show you what you can make. Easy, at least for me.[emoji4] hi LeX!!!!!!!!!
Hi Giggidy!!!
I'm checking out some of the recipes now. I am not gonna go crazy right away but from the looks of things, this is gonna be fun!!!
Pg/vg are inexpensive so you should go ahead and pick some up. In a pinch, walmart carries vg in the pharmacy dept and Tractor supply carries pg.
if you are vaping @6mg(nic) then its good you ordered 12mg so you can cut it down and have twice as much, but also allows you room to correctly mix it for a better recipe outcome.
There is much to learn about DIY but none of it is rocket science. Once you play with the calculators and mix a couple recipes you will start to feel more confident about mixing.
I dont like PG & it's my understanding the ready to vape nic mix I bought just needs flavor added if one wants to add flavor. What I was trying to find out is how much flavoring do I add & all for the exception of 2 people said use the calculator.Pg/vg are inexpensive so you should go ahead and pick some up. In a pinch, walmart carries vg in the pharmacy dept and Tractor supply carries pg.
if you are vaping @6mg(nic) then its good you ordered 12mg so you can cut it down and have twice as much, but also allows you room to correctly mix it for a better recipe outcome.
There is much to learn about DIY but none of it is rocket science. Once you play with the calculators and mix a couple recipes you will start to feel more confident about mixing.
Since my nic is 12mg 100% VG I dont see why I'd have to add PG or more VG.
6mg is not not steadfast for me. Sometimes it's lower than that depending on the gear I'm using. In a tank I prefer 12mg.
I used Ejuice Me Up to enter your values, and see what was going on here. Since you have 12mg nic and you are cutting it to 6mg, it's the vg and flavoring doing the cutting. I didn't read back before your post, but the unknown for me is your flavoring. Most is pg, which would explain where the pg comes in. Therefore, you actually cannot create juice that is 100% vg, unless your flavoring is also vg. That would be some pretty thick juice, in my opinion. How to deal with super think juice is something I cannot help you with.
The 6mg came from someone asking me what do I vape. I said 6-12mg. But I didn't buy 12mg to cut it to 6mg.
I figured my PG would come from the flavoring so that's another reason I didn't go with a 50-50 mix.
The 100% VG is my 12mg nic base.
I think thing are getting lost in translation.
What nicotine level do you want to vape at? 12, 6, whatever it works out to?
What PG/VG ratio do you want?
What do you have to work with?
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