Definitely Don't when DIYing

Don’t mix e-liquid after having enjoyed too much of the adult beverage of your choice. Once I was mixing e-liquid after having had a few too many drinks, and almost mistook my nicotine bottle for my VG bottle. What a disaster that would have been.

Don’t rely on cheap plastic pipettes for precise measurements if you’re making a small batch of e-liquid - it’s really hard to get an accurate amount. Use syringes instead. Plus they can be cleaned of residual flavor more easily than pipettes, which always seem to “lock in” whatever flavor you’ve used in them.

Don’t sweat it if your first trial of a recipe isn’t just the way you want it. Unless you make your living by making and selling e-liquid, either only you, or else just you and close friends, are going to be trying it, so it’s not a disaster if it doesn’t turn out perfectly. I’m sure we’ve all made meals in our kitchens that didn’t turn out quite how we wanted; that doesn’t mean they were inedible. Just learn from your mistakes and move on.

Don’t let it get complicated to the point where it’s frustrating - DIY vaping is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby, not a full-time job.

A few “do’s”:

If you’ve got a bottle of nicotine you know you’re not going to use for a while, store it in the freezer - it’ll slow down the oxidizing.

Make the minor investment in one of those little electric e-liquid hand mixers that use a AA battery - you can get as much mixing in a minute as you get in an hour (or more) of shaking by hand. For a 15 ml batch I mix in a 50 ml beaker; for a 30 or 50 ml batch I mix in a 100 ml beaker.

After decanting into the bottle, set the bottle in a cup of very hot water (before applying your label, of course), and let it sit until the bottle is cool. Repeat if desired. Then dry the bottle, apply your label, and store. The steeping time will be greatly reduced.

For greatest accuracy, use appropriately sized syringes for measuring - if you need 0.7 ml of a flavor, use a 1 ml syringe, if you need 2.3 ml of a flavor, use a 3 ml syringe, and so on. You don’t want to try measure out 0.7 ml of flavor into a 10 ml graduated cylinder. I use the cylinders for measuring out my VG, which makes up the bulk of my recipes . . . plus, it’s a lot of work to try to pull VG up into a syringe, since it’s so thick.

Ignore the “single use only” statement on the syringes. They’re intended for medical use, where single-use is obviously appropriate. But for our purposes, they can be cleaned and reused indefinitely, until the measurement numbers begin to wear off, at which point it needs to be replaced.

You need to wear rubber gloves when handling nicotine, especially at higher concentrations, but I’ve seen a lot of tutorials where the person wears gloves, handles nicotine, spills some nicotine on the gloves, and continues with the rest of the recipe while wearing those same gloves. This defeats the purpose of avoiding cross-contamination. What I do is to put on my gloves, add my nicotine first, then carefully remove the gloves and discard. The next step is to add my VG, the bulk of the recipe, since that dilutes the nicotine down to a level where it’s not so dangerous if you happen to have some skin contact with it, and you can always wash your hands.

Prepare ahead of time! Make sure you have your recipe handy, and gather together all the equipment you’re going to need. You need to be able to concentrate on what you’re doing when making e-liquid, and you don’t want to get halfway through making a recipe only to have to stop what you’re doing and go digging around through your stash trying to find a funnel, a syringe, a beaker, an ingredient, or whatever. Figure out what you’re going to need before you start.

Use a steady hand when drawing up a flavoring into a syringe - it’s all too easy to spill that stuff, and not only is that a waste of money, your kitchen (or wherever) is going to be smelling like whatever flavor it was for a long time.

Finally, get involved in forums such as this one, as well as vaping advocacy groups, and above all, if you vape in public, don’t be a douchebag about it.

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Well said MarkM

When I am going to mix, some of my flavor concentrates are not in dropper bottles, so I use small scringes. Now that I’m using a scale, I don’t need the scringes and a pipette would work. But, the first thing I do when I’m setting up to mix is put a pot of water on the stove to boil. I put some of that water in 3 small cups and I also have another cup with a little bit of my base PG/VG/nic in it. I use about 3 different scringes. Between flavors, I rinse in cup #1, then #2 then #3 (cleanest). Then I go into the PG/VG/Nic and squirt it into the bottle I’m mixing. By then my scringe has been rinsed out several times. I use 3 because I wouldn’t use one for lime then custard. I use the lime one for fruits and the other one for custards.
I haven’t experienced and contamination but of course, I am only mixing for myself, and not for other people.
I’m sure this is not the very best of safest way to do it and I’m not sure if this is a good way of doing things or if it would be of interest… And please do post saying so if you think it is a bad way to do things, but it has worked thus far for me. If someone has done it this way and ended up with a mess, let me know. In time, i’ll probably transfer all of my flavorings to dropper bottles. But when I started out I got like 120 flavors from TPA in bottles that did not have droppers.
Another think I noticed is that people who are posting photos have their flavorings on shelves that are open. I have mine in plastic containers with lids. I wouldn’t dream of leaving them out where dust or cat hairs could land on them. If I am drying bottles after boiling them, I cover them with a large cotton dish cloth. I don’t wash those dish clothes with my other clothes. I wash them with bleach in a clean sink and dry them on a rack in the sun. I’m one of those people who are little scweemish about germs. I use a little bit of bleach in my dish water and wash dishes in very hot water. Once I didn’t have a cold for 4 years. I guess it works. I was lucky to be raised by a woman who taught me well. Some people are not so lucky. I’m proud to say my husband of 24 years has never had food poisoning, and he can not smell anything because he used to paint cars.

Recently, someone gave me about 50 blue glass 15 ml bottles with droppers. I rinsed out each one and removed the labels. I boiled them in water with bleach. I rinsed each one about 4 times, submersed them and boiled them again in plain water. I dried them over night with a dishcloth over them. I made sure they were completely dry, then I put the covers on and put them in a sealed container. Luckily the glue that was on the labels did come off completely. They are like new.

QUESTION: Do you guys boil new bottles? I do, but I’m not sure if you should or not.

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I do wash them, in really hot water with a little bleach. Rinse excessively and don’t put them away until completely dry. I don’t boil them though.

I wash new bottles in the dishwasher, rinse 'em with vodka, and put the caps on with a bit of vodka still on everything. I shake it out when I go to use and carry on. Like rinsing your pipettes in 3 cups of water, I just rinse in an old jar of capers (just to give you an idea on size) filled with 80 proof vodka. I change it out if it starts smelling like flavor, but I don’t go all crazy on germs otherwise. I do try not to pick my nose with the stinky finger though. I’m just kidding, I always wash thoroughly before picking my nose. You never know where those fingers have been. Well sometimes you can smell where, but by then it’s too late. I’m sorry, it’s the rabies.

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DON’T put flavors within your reach when you are dripping.
Don’t ask me how I know this. I’ll deny it! :stuck_out_tongue:

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What else would you expect from a bidweasel. Lol. Thanks for the info on using vodka. Great idea. Something else for me to kill those germs AND its non toxic. Much better than the bleach.

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@SthrnMixer AKA Clouds, he had a bad biting experience. So be nice @ringling

Just bought the American weigh scales.

Wanted to know do you mean the white plastic tray? I haven’t started using it but plan to soon.

I imagined the tray would help with any accidental spillages.

Why shouldn’t it be used?

Thanks

I didn’t mean that, I was only joking about the plastic tray/cover thats on the scale when you first open it. I forgot to remove it and flip it around to use, so I was trying to weigh stuff on it and it wasn’t registering.
Hard to explain in text, but no, nothing is wrong with the actual tray

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happy to hear I’m a, not the only one to do that!:grimacing:

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I used the tray for a while in case of dribbles, but ultimately it was taking up more space in my “kit”. I rarely dribble anymore except the occasional PG (that stuff dribbles so easily out of the condiment-style tips), and the weigh platform it wipes up easy enough for small amounts.

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LOL

http://badsentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Milana-Vayntrub-05.gif

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Thank you for the Thursday morning Milana!

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Oh yeah. She’s a hottie.

If my wife only knew what goes through my mind half the time :slight_smile:

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My EX wife figured it out… LOL

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Definately don’t keep 10ml glass vials on top shelf above your granite countertop. I just dropped the entire vial of Euro flavor Fresh Blueberry and was instantly bathed in it.


Hard to see in pic but the bottom of the vial is completely blown out and its current whereabouts are yet unknown

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im sure you will find all of it when walking through the house barefoot

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I agree with you about using the “right” flavors from the list. I am still new at this and it can get so confusing when the same flavor is listed 5 different ways. I always choose the one that has the highest number next to it, but I also feel like I need to add all of the different versions of that flavor name to my flavor stash so I do not miss out on any good recipe possibilities. Do most of you just keep the right one, or, do you keep them all in your flavor stash?

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I recommend only keeping the correct one. Lars, Ken, and I regularly clean up the database and merge dupe flavors into the correct one.

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