Advantages of mixing with weight?

E-liquids Beginners
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hello people…
well… i am diying like 3-4 years… though i never tried mixing by weight… for some reason i find kinda hard to deal with… and what the benefits are?

mixing by weight for me means:
know exactly the weight of your VG, your VG, your NIC, and most of all every single flavor you’re using… probably some flavors have more or less weight than others… while changing or any of the tools of trade or ingredients might make something go wrong… are these statements false or true?
does it work well with tiny batches (like 5ml) or large batches (like 1l)?

could someone explain me kinda better the whole procedure please and what the benefits are? thank you very much in advance :slight_smile:

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Weight of VG and PG are known. Flavors are usually mostly PG with some additives (or VG with some additives), so for the small %'s that are used, you can pretty much use the same VG/PG weights that are known.
A % of a % is really not making a lot of difference.

Basically, this site has all this data already in its database, so all you do is list the % of flavors, pg, vg, nic and whatever goes in your recipe, and it’ll be displayed in volume, weight and %.

So instead of having to use syringes and measure it off, clean your syringe, dry it, use another flavor, clean it, dry it, use another flavors, etc… you just put your bottle on the scale and go add flavor, push the tar button on the scale, add flavor, push the tar button, etc.

It goes a lot faster and you have a lot less cleanup to do afterwards.

The accuracy of syringes is also overrated because with e-liquid mixing, they’re not used in the correct way. If there’s air between the flavor and the plunger, you won’t get an accurate reading and you’re likely going to use slightly too much flavoring in your mix.

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Let’s keep it simple.

5ml bottles mixing by weight is a little harder. Then again by volumn it’s also hard at that size of volumn when mixing with 6 ingredients. With 15 ml mixes the challenge is not bad…although some flavorings it’s just 3 drops to get 0.07 grams or 2 drops depending on the bottle.

Tools is easy. The scale does the measuring so no time wasted looking at the syringe.

The overall general accepted rule for concentrates is 1ml=1gram. For vg/pg there are specific weights we use. What are they? I don’t know. I set up my calculator 17 months ago and it’s there.

Virtually no clean up. When I mix 15 different recipes all I have to clean is the syringe I use for nic. That’s it.

And so on. :unicorn:

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Yes, very true. The smallest batches I make by weight are 10ml. Anything below that and you’re going to get in trouble with the accuracy of a scale.

Usually I mix 30ml bottles, so there’s absolutely no issue with accuracy with a 0.01g scale. If you’re off by 0.01 or 0.02g, it’s usually not going to make much difference, but there are exceptions to this rule with some extremely strong flavors.
0.02g is approx. 1 drop from any flavor, but drops must be about the most inaccurate way of measuring :slight_smile:

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I agree drops is very tough on repeatability. Too many factors. Hence my old ecx 30ml bottles I get close to 0.07 grams from 2 drops 3 is pushing it. But I squeeze hard and fast (that’s what she said lol).

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IMO it just makes everything easier. Sure, sure, when you have 5ml bottles, you have to be careful with your drops, but it’s just too damned easy. I still use a syringe for my NIC as it’s 100mg, everything else is squeeze bottles, faster to mix, one syringe to clean up, cannot go back to any other way.

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I don’t have a drip nose on my VG bottle, but I’m amazed how accurately you can poor it. I might be off by 0.02g but no more than that. So yeah, only syringe I use is for nic too but even then I don’t use volume, I measure by weight.

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All you need is the weight of the PG, VG and Nic. For the flavors, keep it simple and go with 1ml = 1g. The difference from the actual flavor weight is not going to make that much of a difference. If I’m paying attention, I’m probably just as accurate, if not more, with mixing by weight than by volume. The biggest pro for me is the easy clean up, from 15+ syringes to none. I get out my supplies, mix, put it all back, and if I’m not watching paint dry, I watch them steep.

I do have one small disagreement with Jake31[quote=“Jake31, post:2, topic:136810”]
If there’s air between the flavor and the plunger, you won’t get an accurate reading
[/quote]

I found that with a little bit of air, I could see the level of the liquid better against the markings on the syringe.

The smallest amount I make is 30ml, but I don’t think 5ml would be too much more difficult to do by weight, even the nine flavor recipe I have. I’m pretty confident I could weigh out .05g of a flavor (with my tongue sticking out and fingers crossed).

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Yes you can, but syringes are designed to be used without air in them. It’s the edge of the plunger that should be lined up with the volume you need. The volume in the spout and non-straight shape of the plunger has to be accounted for. So if you let air in it and have the juice line up straight with the volume indicators, you’re actually having too much of your fluid.

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The only way that you’re going to be accurate with syringes, no matter how much air is in them, is if you don’t use all of the liquid. If, for example, you use 2ml from a 3ml syringe and you leave in the remaining 1ml, you should actually have an accurate measurement. It’s the last bits that screw it up because of the volume in the spout and the cone shape of the plunger.

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I go by weight so agree with most of the pros listed above. Also, I mix many, many trial batches all at 5ml with very satisfactory results but I am using a good quality lab scale to do so.

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I’ve often been accused of being difficult… but hey, shoot me for it :stuck_out_tongue:

This recipe: http://e-liquid-recipes.com/recipe/906421
It calls for 0.02g of blackberry in 30ml. Even with the best scale, how to you do this in a 5ml batch?

I don’t want to be difficult, I’d just like to know so I can do it as well.

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You don’t, you would have to break one drop into 6 microdrops to do it. From the look of the recipe, 30ml is the smallest batch you could make regardless of your mixing method. That said, it is the first recipe I’ve ever seen with a .08% of anything so it is likely the exception to the rule. I suppose you could dilute the flavor with PG until you get it down to where you could use 1 drop in 5ml but I’m no math magician.

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That’s actually not a bad idea to dilute strong flavors like that, i’ll keep that in mind. Thanks :slight_smile:

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I see what you’re saying, in the context of the recipe given, extrapolated the calc denotes a negligible amount at 5ml…

If I were inclined to make such a recipe that had a one drop flavor component then I would work with the volume needed.

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[quote=“Mohok, post:1, topic:136810, full:true”]mixing by weight for me means:
know exactly the weight of your VG, your VG, your NIC, and most of all every single flavor you’re using… probably some flavors have more or less weight than others… while changing or any of the tools of trade or ingredients might make something go wrong… are these statements false or true?[/quote]

Yes and no. Yes, it’s more accurate to take each flavor’s specific gravity into consideration when mixing by weight. But as someone already said, we’re talking about small percentages of percentages. And if you’re using the calculator on here, the specific gravities are already taken into consideration for VG, PG, and many of the flavors in the ELR database.

So in a sense, if you’re doing it right, mixing by volume might be slightly more accurate, especially if you’re using flavors that don’t have their gravities entered into the database. However, if the recipe you’re following is made by a mixer that also mixes by weight (I’d venture to guess many, if not most, of them are–keep in my that I admit that that is a complete guess on my part) then it’s probably fair to say that mixing by weight is actually the more accurate method if you want to stay true to the recipe author’s work.

And if you’re a recipe author, I imagine you’ll adjust your recipes to whatever methods you’re using. Whether you mix by volume or by weight you’ll still be able to develop great recipes.

I don’t make 5ml batches. That’s hardly enough to know whether you’ll like a recipe or not for many of the recipes out there, especially if you’re dipping into it at 24 hours, then again at 5 days, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, etc. I usually mix 10-20ml batches on flavors. DIY is so cheap I’m not really bothered if I have to dispose of 5-10ml. At that size (10-20ml), I have no problem mixing by weight.

[quote=“Mohok, post:1, topic:136810, full:true”]could someone explain me kinda better the whole procedure please and what the benefits are? thank you very much in advance :slight_smile:
[/quote]

For me, the biggest advantages of mixing by weight is the cleanup and speed. Super fast to mix by weight, usually less than 5 minutes per 100ml bottle if I have all my gear lined up, organized, and ready to go. If I have to search for flavors, pipettes, bottles, etc. it maybe takes the whole 5 minutes, maybe a minute or two longer. And there is nearly no cleanup, just wash out the pipettes for your nicotine or if you have some of your flavors in bottles that don’t have drippers.

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thank you very much :slight_smile:
unfortunately here i live nicotine bases have gone kinda wild in prices… 10ml is like 4,5 euros (the cheapest ones you can find… they have tax 1.2euro per 10ml unfortunately), before that i would go str8 for 50or 100ml batches at once… now nicotine hurts so i target or really small batches to test flavors etc… so with syringes of 1ml, 2,5ml and 10ml i can do the job with it in 5-10ml batches just for testing… plus the fact that in many cases i can’t find easily the flavors i want… and because of capital controls etc is kinda hard getting stuff from the internet all the time… but i am really interested to try it…

could you please suggest me a good scale to work with?
thank you very much :slight_smile:

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Mixing by weight is…

…MAGICAL! :sunglasses:

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True, I would object to an injection with a syringe that has air between the plunger and liquid. :astonished:

I agree with that, however, that extra amount of liquid has probably the same effect as my inaccurate weight measurements. All ingredients would be off by that much, it would all be relative and probably not make that much of a difference overall. Besides, I rarely hit the exact weight measurement, I usually end up over a bit, except for the Nic. I aim for close but still under the weight.

Regardless, 100% accuracy won’t happen with or without air in the syringe, or even mixing by volume vs. weight. Having that air just makes it easier to read the markings on the syringe. Which brings another pro to mixing by weight, it is easy to read the display on the scale.

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I use the American Weigh Scales LB-501. It’s probably the most commonly recommended scale here and other DIY sites.

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