First off...Hello DIY'ers! I think that after 3+ yrs of vaping...I'm finally ready to dabble in making my own juice (crossing my fingers that I don't poison myself) JK. With that aside, I would like to know:
Hello - I'm a new vaper, and dived directly into DIY because I need to order everything abroad.
But I have learned a lot, both the hard way, and from reading this forum (I am slowly reading back the last 100 pages - it's worth it). Since I like writing loooong posts, I'll try to tackle your questions one by one:
1. Tools needed (beakers, bunson burners, tesla coil...etc)
This can be divided into two parts: measuring equipment and empty bottles.
More is better. Especially empty bottles. I ordered far too few initially, and it was very frustrating.
Especially in the beginning I would recommend having a ridiculous amount of empty 5ml-10ml bottles on hand. Like at least 25. This is because you may want to make different strengths of the same flavour, and let them steep, to be able to compare and find what you like. You may also find that you want to experiment with fixing flavour separately and then combining them, or pre-mix very strong flavours.
Measuring equipment: an assortment of syringes in sizes 1ml to 10ml (or even 20 ml). I am happy now that I have three 1ml syringes in use (one for nic, one for menthol and mint, one for tobacco-ish juices), and 3 more unused waiting for their turn, and one each of 2ml, 5ml, 10ml and 20ml. Needles for the syringes might be a question of taste/preferences. I like having an assortment of those on hand too, very handy for drawing up things from narrow-necked bottles. I have an assortment ranging from 14G (good for thick VG) to 27G (very thin, rarely use that), and have found the 18G and 22G the most useful.
A measuring cylinder might also be a good tool - but I am rather frustrated with my 10ml one, it is too narrow to be practical (hard to stir, impossible to draw up everything without a looong needle), and I find that I would get more use out of a 20ml or 30ml cylinder.
Small funnels would be a good idea. Being a bit clumsy this is something I really need to get - the one I happened to have is just a little bit too wide to fit into most of my bottles.
Disposable plastic pipettes are useful, but more for transferring things from one vessel to another, not for measuring.
What else? Spare atties or cartos for testing! Very important.
2. Who makes the best flavorings and where can I pick them up for a decent price
Can't answer this (wrong continent), but you need to tell us what kind of flavours you are looking for. Fruit-dessert-drink-tobacco?
It seems to me that different flavour companies have different strengths.
I am totally focused on tobacco, and have so far used FlavourArt and Hangsen. The latter is *very* easy, as the flavouring is essentially a concentrate of the flavour used in Hangsen liquids.
Unfortunately Hangsen flavour concentrates might be hard to find, especially if you want to try the whole range.
3. What % of nic should I pic up? I currently use 24mg 50/50 PG/VG,would 100mg be fine cut into .25?
I guess so. I vape 10-14mg/ml, and have found 36mg/ml to be quite handy. With 24mg you will probably want at least 50-60mg/ml, so why not 100mg/ml? But you need to remember to get safety stuff too if you are going to be handling that 100mg/ml (gloves, goggles/faceshield etc).
4. I know that there are a couple of recipe calculators out there, is there one that is web based and constantly updated with new recipes?
I would be careful about using recipes straight off until you know a bit more about what you like. Recipes are unfortunately often given in drops, which makes them very inexact.
I have an android phone, and I use
this app all the time. For looking up more complex things I use scubadatdan's spreadsheet-based calculator (has its own sticky here), I believe that one also has a few recipes.
I will leave the math up to people that are more up to speed. Been to long for me to comfortably give out this info. If you don't get many replies look for a member str8vapor, or also hairball can help you here.
