New to DIY.. Help

Off the hook? For what? What’d I do? I’m INNOCENT I tell ya!!!

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She says with a sinister grin on her face :smiling_imp:

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As for step by step…my little thumbs can’t type that fast. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Reading will help. Another recomendation for me mixing by weight here. That covers pretty much the step by step as well as the other threads.

My only recomendation or “juice for thought” is plan ahead before making that first purchase. Or making that second purchase. Take notes on what you want to order. Once your plan is ready do a test run and look at the cost to start…then set the plan aside…do some more reading…look at some more recipies…do another plan.

Always ask your self…will I have what I need to make my first batch of juice? Do I have a few highly rated recipies that I can mix for which I ordered flavor concentrates? Are there questions I haven’t asked in the forums regarding what I’m not sure about? Can I afford to buy extra flavors that will allow me to play around with…what’s my spending ceiling?

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I have my all the things to star diy… Digital scale … Gloves … Bottles … Pipettes 1mg … Flavoring… VG …PG… Ready to order but with the nicotine I don’t understand this
100% nicotine…18mg…24mg …100mg … I don’t know what to select … I vape at 3 mg of nicotine. Thanks

A lot of people pick 100mg Nic because you don’t have to use as much and it winds up being cheaper in the long run. I personally don’t like working with nic that is that high since I have cats and a kid. If I buy it that high, I dilute it for every day use and store the rest in the freezer. Usually I buy 48mg or 60mg. In the calculator, you put in what is in your PG/VG and Nic base and then what you want your final strength to be and your final PG/VG ratio and as long as it’s possible, (ie you can’t have 100% VG if you’re using PG based flavors), it will tell you how much you need of each thing.

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100mg Nic in a VG base is what I purchase and I also vape 3mg ejuice. The reason I purchase the higher concentrated Nic is to save money. It needs to be handled very carefully though. It’s extremely caustic. When I receive the Nic, I immediately cut it down to 48mg using VG, then store in my freezer. When I pull one of the smaller 48mg Nic bottles from my freezer, I let it sit for 24hrs in my dark cabinet to return to room temp, shake well one time, then use. Many people just buy 48mg or lower because they don’t want to have to take precautions using gloves, etc to handle 100mg Nic. It’s really up to you.

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I thought I read somewhere it is better to store nic in the freezer at a higher concentration. So if that is true diluting it first is actually not a good thing. Maybe it was on Nude Nicotine’s site? If I remember I will check later. I could be wrong.

I wonder why?
Hmmm. I would think you’d not want to keep pulling out that bottle of 100mg, thawing, pouring some off, etc.

I was actually backwards. You are better to dilute it.

This info is from https://www.nudenicotine.com/category/e-liquid-chemistry-education/
"…Few last points to cover – shelf-life varies largely by nicotine strength, as well as PG/VG ratio. Higher nicotine strengths will possess more nicotine molecules, less likely to be completely solvated by their carrier (PG/VG). Put simply – 100mg/mL formulations will keep for less time than a 24mg/mL formulation. PG is also a much better solvent for this purpose – it has an extremely low viscosity, will dissipate dispersed oxygen bubbles quickly (say that 4 times fast!), and has a longer shelf-life chemically (2 years from DOM, vs. VG – 1 year). Thus some may only see a short shelf-life for a 100mg/mL solution kept on a shelf compared to a 24mg/mL solution kept in multiple frozen aliquots. Remember, nicotine solution solvated in wither PG or VG WILL NOT FREEZE!"

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Now you guys have me wondering if I should dilute my 100mg VG base nic. Hmm, I usually just fill a smaller 60ml bottle that I use for my mixing and store the rest. It would be nice to not have to deal with the gloves as I already really cautious when using the nic to not spill or get it anywhere other than in my mix.

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I have a question about the using of scales in g instead of syringes in ml…
this has probably already been addressed else-where, but I haven’t really seen much in detail about it…
how to do you figure ml into g? like if i have a 50ml bottle (like i intend on using) for my juice, how would i be able to measure out each component accurately from such and such ml of this and that, to know how much i would need in g? if that makes any sense at all… lol. I also plan to start DIY, and want to do my first start up order on my next upcoming payday (april 1). in a crunch to get my facts straight, in time. :slight_smile: i originally made a list of syringes and things I thought I would need, based off some starter kits I found at various sites, figured I could get what I need cheaper than buying a $50 kit full of extra stuff I won’t really use. since it will be my first go at it, I would like to be as accurate as possible, so I can document my doings better for future use, with less guess work and estimating…

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I would grab this scale

I personally don’t use syringes any more. I just drip from the bottle. You have to go to your preferences and set the calculator to use grams instead of drops. When you create a recipe and tell it you want to use 2% of this and 3% of that it figures the grams for you. So when you are ready to mix you just set the bottle on the scale. Tare the scale (zero it). Then just add the first ingredient to the bottle until the scale reads the grams listed in your recipe. Once that ingredient is added, tare the scale again and add the next ingredient. Etc.

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So, you are saying, this method is totally dependent on the calculator, then?

Yes. If you set your preferences to grams instead of drops, when you create a recipe it will tell you how many grams to add.

okay. my girlfriend and I have been thinking up ideas for flavors to try making together, (have 22 ideas already written down :slight_smile: ), no specific measurements yet, just the initial idea of what flavors we want together ect… most are unique (haven’t found already existing on here), a few are similar, with minor changes (adding a different flavor or subbing out flavors)… I guess what I would need to know is, when creating a new flavor without a pre-existing recipe, what is the best method of documenting that? If I only have the scale, I won’t know the ml used, and would make planning ahead to order more flavors, and knowing how much I can make ect… more difficult, wouldn’t it?

You would do yourself a bunch of good to read through the Resources and Tips for Beginners thread. All of this info is there.

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And I have a bit of a tutorial on how to create a recipe in this thread.

Which is also shared in the Resources and Tips thread.

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Awesome, thank you!

It’s not TOTALLY dependent on the calculator if you’re decent with math.

Flavors are, on average, 1g/1ml. They do tend to vary, but most people around here just use that. The specific gravity of VG is about 1.26g/ml, of PG is 1.036g/ml, water is 1g/ml. I don’t think the calculator takes into account the weight nicotine adds to your Nic base, so it goes by the weight of the PG/VG in the base. If you’re really interested, I can provide some of the numbers I have found for Nic base. I’d just go with the PG/VG though.

So what does that all mean? That means that you have to do a lot of multiplying to translate ml to g. Start with your base. Say you use 20ml of 50/50 nic. That’d be the same as 10ml PG and 10ml VG weight wise. So you’d have 1.036 g/ml x 10ml = 10.36 g and 1.26 g/ml x 10ml = 12.6g for a total of 22.96g of base. Repeat this with each thing you typically add—extra PG, VG, flavors, water, etc.

Or, just use the calculator with your preference set to grams instead of drops and be tickled pink cuz it does it all for you :smiley:

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I have been relentlessly reading up on flavors and comparing between comments and suggestions of many flavors, and brands for each, and decided to take a stab at an estimate on the calculator of some juices i intend on creating once I get my stuff in, based on what I have read… I know it wont be super great, since I haven’t the experience first hand, yet, but I hope they will come out decent enough to not be total trash right from the get-go :stuck_out_tongue:
I am hesitant to share, yet, but I am really curious what you would think of one of them, since it was quite heavily inspired by a recipe you shared (found on my own while trying to determine appropriate amounts, and was pleasantly surprised to see you already had a very similar recipe).

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