No more cigarettes !

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ceeceeisme

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Well its looking now like I'm going to be using a scale as my Brother went and bought me a whole bunch of mixing tools, and graduated cylinders so all of the advice you gave will work perfectly. I want to be able to do it both ways if something goes wrong, like the scale breaking randomly. Im know i'll be using the things you suggested so thanks for that ! All of these things you all have mentioned are helpful and I'm thankful for that !

Hopefully he bought one that measures to 2 decimal places - it's a necessity for accuracy when mixing small amounts. It's always good to have the back up tools at hand - I started with syringes and have more than 40 here in case my scale goes down (they are cheap from fasttech) and good to have anyway. I still use a dropper to measure the nic into the bottle on the scale because I keep my nic in amber glass bottles (I've been freezing them in 50ml bottles so I can take one out at a time).

Once you try mixing with cylinders and syringes you'll see all the fussy cleaning up you have to do afterwards. A pain in the back side! I'm OCD about keeping the mixing syringes clean, now it's not even a concern.

Mixing by weight:

 

CumulusRoom

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Nov 25, 2016
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Thanks for that advice :) Im slowly accumulating the necessary things at the moment, he got me the American Weigh Scales LB-501 Digital kitchen scale and is going to show me how to use it for the most part. I use a dropper too for the Nicotine base, it seems to work the best. Is there a benefit to the freezing aspect ? Its amazing to stop and think about how much money we spent on cigarettes, crazy. having not spent over $100 in the past couple weeks makes it easy to get on with the quitting spiral.
 
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CumulusRoom

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ITs amazing to think about how many vacations we paid for with the sales of cigarettes for decades ! I started in 1989 and back then it was the "cool" thing to do. Never actually bought cigarettes until i was 17. Im 43 now and thats over 26 years of smoking. Even back then the cigarettes i smoked were $8. So i figured on average i spent about $3650 a year. Times 26 years. I just did the math and thats $94,900 I've spent. Or the equivalent to a Maserati.
 

r77r7r

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    ITs amazing to think about how many vacations we paid for with the sales of cigarettes for decades ! I started in 1989 and back then it was the "cool" thing to do. Never actually bought cigarettes until i was 17. Im 43 now and thats over 26 years of smoking. Even back then the cigarettes i smoked were $8. So i figured on average i spent about $3650 a year. Times 26 years. I just did the math and thats $94,900 I've spent. Or the equivalent to a Maserati.
    Ouch! Don't remind me, lol. Great news that you're done with all that and have joined us here.
     
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    ceeceeisme

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    Thanks for that advice :) Im slowly accumulating the necessary things at the moment, he got me the American Weigh Scales LB-501 Digital kitchen scale and is going to show me how to use it for the most part. I use a dropper too for the Nicotine base, it seems to work the best. Is there a benefit to the freezing aspect ? Its amazing to stop and think about how much money we spent on cigarettes, crazy. having not spent over $100 in the past couple weeks makes it easy to get on with the quitting spiral.

    You've got an awesome brother! The LB-501 is the better scale - same one used in the video I posted above. If you watch the video you will see how easy it is to mix by weight. You just need to set up a couple of test recipes to try and the rest will come with some time and experience. I found I needed lots of 10ml plastic squeeze bottles to make up test batches before I made up bigger bottles. You can pick those up on the cheap from China (use ebay or fasttech - fasttech is faster, but not by much and not quite as cheap as eBay). I've been buying batches of 25 bottles for $3.59 (including free shipping) here:

    25/50/100PCS 5-50ml Empty Plastic Squeezable Dropper Bottles Eye Liquid Dropper | eBay

    lol - I saw they were on sale today for $3.41 so I bought 25 more

    Anyway, my advice would be to keep it simple - try some 2 or 3 ingredient recipes until you get the hang of it. And, visit the DIY section here on ECF (it's a subsection under General E-Liquid Discussion)

    DIY E-Liquid

    Tons of great advice from people that have been doing it for years.

    And, I hope I don't come off sounding like an expert because I've only been mixing my own juice for just under 6 weeks now. But, I can say without a doubt, I mixed up 10 bottles today in the same amount of time it would have taken to mix up 2 using syringes. It actually takes longer to figure out your recipes and line up all your flavorings than it does to mix the actual bottle up when you mix by weight. Since I got the scale I've gone on a mixing frenzy here - I'm just about up to 100 bottles mixed now (lots and lots of 10ml tests and also quite a few larger bottles have been made over and over because I vaped them away so fast :thumb: )

    Oh, and as far as freezing the nic - I do that just for stock up reasons. It's cheaper to buy larger sized bottles of nic but I don't want it sitting around and oxidizing. I divided my nicotine into a whack of brown glass bottles when I first bought it so I only take 50ml at a time out of the freezer in order to preserve freshness. Are you in the good old USA? You might consider doing that sometime in the near future if you want to still have access to nic. I'm not sure what's going to happen down there with you guys - looks like in Canada our government may take a more liberal view on vaping than the FDA appears to be doing.
     

    BrotherBob

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    I filled the bottle to 80% (by eye) and filled the rest with a blend of Ripe Pear, TFA Mango, peach, TFA strawberry ripe, FW blood Orange and a minute amount of vanilla creme. IMO its amazing, but thats just me. I would test small amounts and added a bit more here and there and ended up with a perfect mix of those fruits.
    Welcome and glad you joined. DIY is far more enjoyable than buying e-liquid, keep mixing.
    Might like to read: Tips for Beginners – DIY OR DIE
    Could read the stickies in this forum:
    DIY E-Liquid
     

    JCinFLA

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    The whole "it's easier, quicker, less clean-up, etc." info on comparing measuring by weight to by volume or by drops...is all a matter of one's own personal experience, preference, and opinion. There's more than 1 way to DIY that will end with the same results.

    I measure by volume and make my eliquids directly into the bottles they'll stay in. In fact, the only things I actually measure out are the flavorings and the Nic Base! I use just a couple syringes and 4-5 14ga. blunt needle tips to measure them. The plain PG and plain VG just get squirted and/or poured into the bottles to designated levels, depending on if I'm making a 30mL, 50mL, or 100mL bottle. It's easy-peasy, and clean-up is just a quick 1-minute or less wash for the 2 syringes and blunt needle tips!

    I have, but don't use, many beakers and graduated cylinders from teaching Science for 30 years. Have a bunch of brand new ones, too, from 10mL - 2000mL size. Also have 2 scales, with the appropriate capabilities, that I could use for measuring by weight if I chose to, but see no need to, when by volume works great for me! In fact, I've told/shown 3 other people I'm helping with DIY about how I do it. Two of the 3 had even already bought the stuff for measuring "by weight", but are now also measuring by volume instead! The third one hadn't bought it yet luckily. Saved her quite a bit of money she could use for more flavorings, Nic, etc. So again...it's all about what works for each individual person.
     
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