Why do some people continue to buy premade coils and juice?

[GeorgeS]

I suppose it all depends on what your goals and objectives are.

• factory coils can last a week ($15/5=$3)
• 30ml of juice can last a week ($15-$30)
• Smoking analogs ~$50 a week so vaping offers a savings of $17-$32 (32-64%) a week

I'll have to admit that when I started I wanted nothing to do with winding and building coils. However with enough frustration with the hit/miss of factory coils (some would last for +1 week and others would not work at all) whatever time I should of been saving using prebuild stuff was quickly eaten up by a faulty coil or two.

Others have much better luck than I did and are quite happy to continue using pre-built coils.

 

[AndriaD]

Just getting back to this thread.

As far as time, it takes far LESS time to whip up a 30ml batch of juice than to drive to the store and pick some up. Or play the waiting game with shipping. Once you have a free calculator like ejuicemeup down, it tells you exactly how much of what to put in. Suck up the amounts in a syringe, squirt in a container, shake it up, and there you go. It takes less than 5 minutes.

Price isn't the only plus side. You can customize the flavors exactly to your taste. Make them as strong or weak as you want. And premade coils...I've tried a bunch. The flavor always starts to weaken after a couple days. With DIY coils, just yank out the cotton, do a dry burn, replace the cotton. You have a fresh coil without relying on Chinese made junk with who knows what on it.

Just my opinions and why I do it.

It takes less time, if you already know how -- but when you don't yet, then it seems it will take forever to learn "this DIY business." I got lucky, both in finding a good ejuice right off the bat (within about 2-3 wks of starting to vape), and then when I started DIY, coming up with a terrific recipe within about a month of starting. But I had "store bought" for that month while I was trying to puzzle it out, and one can't stop buying juice until one knows FOR SURE that one knows how to make it.

As for coils... it's very intimidating to mess with "electrical stuff" if you've never done it before -- you can only learn that once you decide that learning a new thing isn't scary, and take steps to figure it out -- but until that point, you still need coils to vape with, so you buy them. If one has more things to do than time in which to do them, one may not ever get to that point, if the bought coils are still vaping well enough to keep you off smokes -- which is the entire point of all this. You know... if it ain't broke... why fix it?

Andria

 

[VNeil]

Still have a couple of Supermatic's in the cupboard. Haven't been used in five years, but I still have them.
Some of us RYOed some of the time.

Complete Lab!!! What complete lag??? You mean the Pyrex measuring cup & the Kerr canning jar????
You can make mixing juice as simple or as complicated as you want too. I choose to use the KISS method.

It is true that vapers, as a group, are the most OCD people I've ever run across. It is also true that mixing juice can be more like cooking or mixing a margarita than lab work. And I'm sure I have more $$$ in kitchen gadgets, pots and pans, and measuring cups, than vape lab gear. And just like cooking you can make it as simple as possible or throw endless money at it. You can cook rice in a sauce pan or a $300 fuzzy logic rice cooker

 

[catlady60]

I build my own coils, but buy premade juice because I live with someone who claims to be sensitive to the scents the flavorings emit. I can't DIY my juice because my roomie can't even breathe when exposed to most perfumes/flavorings.
I wish they had unscented flavors, those which you can taste the juice without leaving any smell. I wonder if that's possible to create them.

 

[daviedog]

I'm very new here. Actually 6 days analog free today. I have been reading like crazy here, because I know nothing about vaping.

During my research here, I watched an amazing video, that broke it down with math, exactly how much money people are spending, and how much money it actually cost to DIY your own ejuices.

It was amazing. If you DIY, you can make enough ejuice to last a month, for less than the cost of 1 pack of analogs!

I just can't miss out on a savings like that!
Especially when you consider the cost of buying ejuice for a year. Make it yourself for about $70.00 a year.

So, I have started collecting my supplies, but have a couple if questions:

Where do I buy the nicotine? And it seems like we can freeze it? How long will stay good in the freezer? Someone buys it in glass bottles, is that the best way to buy it?

How long is ejuice good, after it is mixed?

How long are the premade coils susposed to last? A week?

I saw on here to clean tanks in ethanol or iso alcohol, is that what you all do. It said once a week, and let it dry overnight.
Does this prolong the life of the coils/wicks?

Can anyone direct me to a good video that shows how to rebuild them. I am not very technical, but I am a nurse, so maybe I will be able eventually to do my own.

Thanks!

Try Wizard labs..x

 

[BreSha6869]

I suppose it all depends on what your goals and objectives are.

• factory coils can last a week ($15/5=$3)
• 30ml of juice can last a week ($15-$30)
• Smoking analogs ~$50 a week so vaping offers a savings of $17-$32 (32-64%) a week

I'll have to admit that when I started I wanted nothing to do with winding and building coils. However with enough frustration with the hit/miss of factory coils (some would last for +1 week and others would not work at all) whatever time I should of been saving using prebuild stuff was quickly eaten up by a faulty coil or two.

Others have much better luck than I did and are quite happy to continue using pre-built coils.

Same here.

I just ordered a bunch of Kanger coils from Fasttech for under $2 each (I get a week out of one) and 600ml of juice from a great local supplier for about $3.50 per $30ml.

If I use 50 coils a year and just over 1l of juice a year, my total cost would be $250-300/yr. Add another couple hundred for a bunch of bottles of premade "premium" juice, I am still about $40 a month. I am not rich, but I spend way more on one coffee a day.

If the govt regulates everything and taxes the hell out of juice, I will stock up on DIY juice and coils, but for now I am happy doing what I am doing.

 

[Firestorm]

I wish they had unscented flavors, those which you can taste the juice without leaving any smell. I wonder if that's possible to create them.

Unfortunately, the "taste" that we get from flavored eliquid is delivered by smell. Try to hold your nose and vape - you won't "taste" anything.

 

[AndriaD]

I build my own coils, but buy premade juice because I live with someone who claims to be sensitive to the scents the flavorings emit. I can't DIY my juice because my roomie can't even breathe when exposed to most perfumes/flavorings.
I wish they had unscented flavors, those which you can taste the juice without leaving any smell. I wonder if that's possible to create them.

My husband isn't quite as bad as that -- he doesn't have a terribly keen nose, though it's improved considerably since he stopped having to breathe 2nd hand smoke -- but he puts away the clean dishes, and I keep all my flavors in one of my kitchen cabinets; he insists that I keep the cabinet door open where they are, so that he doesn't get a faceful of that mixed, concentrated scent when he opens the other cabinets to put away the clean dishes. He also says that he can tell when I'm mixing my regular strawberry, that he can smell it all the way back to his bedroom... but I have my doubts about that; I'd think it was simply he was hearing me going about it, except his ears are even worse than his nose. But at least he says that strawberry smell is pleasant, so he doesn't object.

I seriously doubt it's possible to have a juice that can be tasted, without scent, since scent is at least 75% of the sense of taste. Even the Virginia I used to vape, though it had little or no smell while vaping it, did have a strong odor in the bottle.

Andria

 

[BreSha6869]

Unfortunately, the "taste" that we get from flavored eliquid is delivered by smell. Try to hold your nose and vape - you won't "taste" anything.

Yup.

Plug your nose and taste just about anything. Next to no taste.

 

[Tortus]

Yup.

Plug your nose and taste just about anything. Next to no taste.

I just tried this with some chocolate mint liquid I made and I could definitely taste it on the tongue, without it spitting back.

But yeah smell does add to it.

 

[SpyderBite]

I just switched to an rba and am still in the learning stages of building my own coils. But, I was blowing through a 5 pack of kanger coils every 1.5 weeks. And since the least expensive option for prebuilt coils was China; it was inconvenient to try and time my vape mail so I wasn't left short handed. Even counting the dozens of coils I've screwed up with my new rba, I haven't needed to buy a single pre-built coil in almost 3 weeks. And I've only spent about $20 on wires/wicks which will last me a year.

With that said; I enjoyed the ease of just swapping out a pre-built coil and rba kind of intimidated me a bit.

If you think back to when disposable cartos were our only option, it is obvious why pre-built coils became so popular almost immediately.

As far as juice goes.. I'm on the fence about this one. I DIY my juice but I also buy juice from vendors. Sometimes a good vendor can mix a certain flavor way better than I can.

 

[Alien Traveler]

Yup.

Plug your nose and taste just about anything. Next to no taste.

Unfortunately, the "taste" that we get from flavored eliquid is delivered by smell. Try to hold your nose and vape - you won't "taste" anything.

Not at all. Smell helps, but for most foods it is not as important as are taste buds.

OK, I just made an experiment: made a few draws of my absinthe flavored juice. Well defined taste with "plugged" nose. The same true with my cap of coffee. And I use only about 1-2% of flavorings instead of usual 20%.

 

[VHRB2014]

It would seem to be a simple answer, because they can afford it.

Hey man, day traders ai`nt got no time for winding coils. There is only enough time to make the money, and then go out and par-tee.

 

[AndriaD]

I just switched to an rba and am still in the learning stages of building my own coils. But, I was blowing through a 5 pack of kanger coils every 1.5 weeks. And since the least expensive option for prebuilt coils was China; it was inconvenient to try and time my vape mail so I wasn't left short handed. Even counting the dozens of coils I've screwed up with my new rba, I haven't needed to buy a single pre-built coil in almost 3 weeks. And I've only spent about $20 on wires/wicks which will last me a year.

With that said; I enjoyed the ease of just swapping out a pre-built coil and rba kind of intimidated me a bit.

If you think back to when disposable cartos were our only option, it is obvious why pre-built coils became so popular almost immediately.

As far as juice goes.. I'm on the fence about this one. I DIY my juice but I also buy juice from vendors. Sometimes a good vendor can mix a certain flavor way better than I can.

Your situation with coils sounds very similar to what I experienced when I first started -- I was going thru them so fast, I could neither really afford them, nor keep them in stock enough to feel secure -- quite a few times, I was on my very last one, wondering if the ones i was awaiting would come that day, and sometimes, they didn't -- EEK! So I started learning to rebuild those tiny kanger coils; the vape didn't really change to the glory I'd heard described, but at least I felt a bit more security.

The only problem was, with those tiny kanger coils, unless you use NR-R-NR wire, you stand a good chance of burning the insulators, which gives a really nasty taste. Finally I took the plunge and ordered a kayfun lite plus clone, by Tobeco -- and haven't looked back, though for a few weeks I felt very nostalgic for that ease of just swapping a new coil for a bad one. It passed -- when I finally discovered organic cotton for wicks, I finally understood all the hype. And when some of my earliest coils lasted 90 days or more, just needing new wicks from time to time, I *really* understood what a huge savings it was. I used Kayfuns exclusively for quite a while, nearly a year, because I didn't think there were any RDAs suitable for "tootle puffers," but then I found the Magma, and finally, the Achilles -- vaping nirvana, as far as this tootle puffer is concerned.

Now I wouldn't use a device that takes replaceable coils if someone gave it to me.

Andria

 

[bones1274]

To the OP, why on earth would anyone ever go out to eat or buy pre made foods when it is 10x cheaper to make everything from scratch every day? Screw big business and the little man! I got to stay at home and spend an hour plus every day making all of my meals because I would be a fool for going to Mickey D's and paying more! Don't even think about going to a bar and paying 5 bucks for a beer when you can get a six pack for less and drink at home or in the bar parking lot!

Ok, rant off. It seems I cannot go a week or two without one of these threads popping up. People buy premade juice and coils for two main reasons, taste and convenience. The same reason we go out to eat sometimes. No matter how hard I try, how much money I spend, how many hours I waste, or how many batches I make and throw away, I am never going to be able to perfectly 100% re-create Mickey D's French fries.

 

[brian kennedy]

I use heads I like for my everyday vape that cost less than a buck and last about three weeks. My coil building is reserved for drippers and occasional flavor chases. When I run low on my 10 year supply of heads, they will get rebuilt. Until then, not worth the trouble for me.

Liquid for me is a place where one can get creative and save a lot of money, so I make most all of ours.

Questioning why other don't vape the way you like to is the mistake many make. It is unrealistic to expect that former smokers, who simply went to the store and bought packs or cartons, would all want to wind wires and mix liquids. Some, maybe most, have never been into crafts, tools, formulas or fixing things. They just want to vape.

If it keeps one from smoking, who cares? Different strokes for different folks.

Absoulutly true. Keeping off the smokes is the name of the vape game. Use and do it how you like. Just keep on vaping. B.K.

 

[niko69]

Because some of us have jobs, families and meaningful lives that don't evolve around mixing dangerous chemicals, playing with wires...when all we have to do is spend few bucks...

 

[tj99959]

I just wanna know why every coil in every topper I have decides to go belly up at the same time.

 

[JavaJunkie]

I do build my own coils, but I'm not into making my own juice. I have cats and other people on ECF have assured me that keeping supplies cat hair free is easier than one would think, but I'm just not comfortable having a jug of PG or PG flavorings around the furbabies. If I had dogs, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'm sure that I'd be super careful to keep the caps on and to put them in a container where the kids couldn't get to a spill or lick it, but Heinz Body Anemia is no joke. Until I live in a place where I can have a room or a walk in closet dedicated to DIY, I'll be buying juice.

Building my own coils was out of intellectual curiosity and it was a financial decision. People talk about getting a week or two weeks on premade coils. Never happened for me. I get about 3-5 days and a week in rare circumstances. So coil building makes sense and if I'm feeling lazy, I just use on of those Kanger pre-wound coils.

 

[ReigntheGamer]

Because some of us have jobs, families and meaningful lives that don't evolve around mixing dangerous chemicals, playing with wires...when all we have to do is spend few bucks...

I wish I could say this but all my vape gear is in my Mom's basement near all my video games so I have plenty of time. I haven't seen the sun in 30 years.