Wasn’t gonna sugar coat it - Here’s the deal, I did some math over the weekend and as a 10+ years vaper I was appalled with myself that I’ve never even looked into DIY mixing. I hastily placed some orders to try some things out before I commit to a big long-term order before the mail ban goes through. I know this is a well-established community with plenty of resources for me to take in, which I plan on doing ASAP, but as I feel I’m in a bit of a time-crunch I wanted to ask a probably very basic question about salt nic:
At a quick glance I get the impression that I can “use salts just like I would freebase”. If both are at 100mg per, they can be used interchangeably without modification to the recipe. Okay.
Why is it that salts then only come commercially in these massive 25/50mg strengths and are marketed exclusively for pod use? What happens if you mix a standard 30/70 with 6mg salts instead of free and then pop it in a sub-ohm? Does something explode? Or does it become “basically” the same thing, except that high mg free is nasty whereas high nic salts remain smooth and are therefore only sold in this manner?
Thanks in advance! I’ve been beyond excited about undergoing this new avenue and I’m trying very hard to keep my dumb questions to a minimum.
Salts are smoother than freebase nicotine. With a high dose like you get in pods, it would be extremely harsh.
That’s probably why it is marketed that way. You can interchange them though, no problem.
Some people like the throat hit they get from freebase nicotine better than the smoothness of salts.
That’s using average percentage like the 6mg you’re using.
So…
Your deduction is absolutely correct.
Oh, before I forget, there’s no such thing as a dumb question, especially concerning nicotine.
Dumb is not asking and ending up in hospital with nic poisoning
If you look into why salts even exist the explanation is the high nicotine need of a smoker who just quit smoking on a low wattage device.
Take for example the low wattage Nord I started vaping with at 22mg/ml FB wasn’t giving me 22mg/ml because of inefficient means of the low wattage. When I switched to MTL it converted to about 6mg/ml.
With nicotine salts MFGs were able to increase nicotine content without adverse effects of throat hit while still being able to mix at 50/50 PG/VG for wicking.
Even though they are interchangeable, it will make a difference on what type of hardware you’re using. If you use low wattage pods, the salts will probably be much better at higher concentrations. Your typical high powered RDA hit at high nic content will give you a pretty big, and in my case, uncomfortable nic rush.
Using both systems you might have to make two seperate mixes to achieve a comfortable amount of nicotine for each. The salts at higher concentrations are far smoother than FB. At lower concentrations, I have not seen any benefits of salts as far as being smoother. Some may disagree.
Yeah pretty much salts were developed to be used in lower powered devices, where you get less power to tiny coils that only output a relatively tiny amount of vapor (compared to medium powered and sub-ohm setups.
Naturally, with a tiny device that outputs a tiny amount of vapor you’ve gotta pack a lot more nicotine in that vapor for proje to get their dose.
From what I’ve subconsciously absorbed through reading too, those lower powered pods were mostly created to give new vapers a simple vaping experience and of course Juul are the standard for this kind of vaporizer: 50-60mg/mL in a pen sized device that’ll give smokers an experience as close as possible to smoking.
Course DIYers have been making their own salt nic since 2015 or something, so it’s nothing new but I think Juul was responsible for flooding the market with a device that showed people how good salt nic can be.
Some commercial salt liquids come in lower mg/mL now.
In fact, one my favorites Killer Custard comes in 12mg, 24mg and 48mg and I’ve seen other liquids that start as low as 12mg too.
Even 18mg freebase is very nasty unless you’ve got a really nice mouth-to-lung tank or pod: trying to sub-ohm that shit will not only be harsh, the taste of the freebase nicotine itself will be so dominant it ruins nice juices.
Salts don’t have the ‘peppery/needling’ throat crap at all either, and have a really good lung hit that’s almost identical to actual cigarette smoke.
