Table of Contents
- 1
- 2 Big Daddy Vapor – Spinfuel Interview with Dee & John
- 2.0.1 Dee & John: We’re happy to share with you and everyone. Thank you to all at Spinfuel for taking an interest in our tanks. And for everything you all do for our vaping community.
- 2.0.2 Dee: Each one of our tanks is made by hand and each one is different, there’s no assembly line here punching out tanks. Also, our site is a collection of products John and I have found to be so very helpful to make our vaping lives easier.
- 2.0.3 Combined with information in our Vaping 101 that keeps on growing and How to Videos which we completely recommend taking the time to read and watch.
- 2.0.4 Dee & John: Our story is like so many others. With over 20yrs of smoking cigarettes for the both of us. We so much desired something different. A way we could have our nicotine without all the stinky clothes, nasty ashes, burning ourselves and everything else that came with that lifestyle.
- 2.0.5 Dee: We launched Big Daddy Vapor September 1st 2011. Although we were shown just how much people were fed up with their leaky, slidey tanks when we received a call from someone who was watching John work with getting the site up while it was live or “on air” a couple days before that.
- 2.0.6 Dee & John: We fell in love with the dual coil cartomizer from Smoktech. But vaping to us was a yin/yang thing. The positive was all the things we could experience again like breathing, tasting our foods and having a refreshingly new sense of the word ‘smell’.
- 2.0.7 The negative was all the problems we had with our setups. We knew we wanted to find a way to tank that cartomizer. Once we achieved that and were vaping easily and happy, we knew then we could help others.
- 2.0.8 So once we found we could consistently provide a tank with no leaks, that we could pick up our setup by the tank, it was a no-brainer to help others find their vape too.
- 2.0.9 Dee: After that John actually started talking to a reseller and after showing them our tanks we were setup to produce for them. Then at the last moment, tanks made and in our hands they backed out.
- 2.0.10 Although we were quite appreciative of them for finding a buyer for those tanks. It was that experience that solidified in our heads to make our site to share our love of DIY-ness to our vaping community. Maybe kinda cool to read… breathtaking and heart skippin’ a beat to go through.
- 2.0.11 What’s the saying’ “I will not enter the grave gently, rather skidding in sideways screaming Holy **it what a ride”.
- 2.0.12 Dee & John: Because in our opinion we’ve tried them all and we think the cartomizers taste the best out of all of them. And once we made our tanks that work consistently and easily with our SYM multi-purpose tool there wasn’t a reason to keep looking. But rumor has it the bottom coil Kanger’s will work with our tanks.
- 2.0.13 Dee & John: We’ve done the China tanks and we feel it’s the demand for a tank that is cared for from being just metal to an awesome tank. Machines that mass-produce don’t take the individual time we do with each and every tank.
- 2.0.14 The Who’s Your Daddy tank was made with our hands and given our energy. We’re invested in a way much more powerful than money and here to help our customers. We absolutely love our vaping family and chat with them often. Hi everyone!
- 2.0.15 But in the end, Thank you China for the inexpensive cartomizers, we can take it from there…lol
- 2.0.16 Dee & John: We knew we weren’t the only ones out there that were having the problems with other vaping products. We were happy to hear the positive feedback from our customers. Actually, when we first started making our Who’s Your Daddy tanks our price was too high and we didn’t like that.
- 2.0.17 We knew right off the bat we weren’t going to settle for paying that price for material. Great thing was from the support of our customers loving our tanks we were able to buy from a different company that had HUGE minimums for order quantity and the material was better too.
- 2.0.18 Combine that with coming up with ways to get our tooling hardware to last longer, we were able to see our costs go down.
- 2.0.19 It was then we decided to drop the price and pass our savings to our customers instead of holding “meat on the bone” for resellers.
- 2.0.20 Dee & John: The limit of 2 tanks is there because we build our tanks to serve our customers and not to sell to a reseller to sell to someone else. We are only 2 people and it will stay that way. We don’t ever see ourselves trusting someone to give our tanks the attention we do. And knowing we helped our vapers is our pride.
- 2.0.21 Dee & John: For our ‘Who’s your Daddy’ tanks, it came from one of our awesome customers you said “if you ever get the opportunity to use Who’s your Daddy for a product name, you should”.
- 2.0.22 As far as our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool, we’re lovers of movies and one-liners. After all, this should be fun and easy not stressful like we associate the nasty analogs with. And our Slap yo’ Mama name it came from a movie where they were talking about BBQ that tasted so good it makes you wanna Slap yo’ Mama.”
- 2.0.23 So when we messed around with our first prototype it was the first thing that was said, well…. besides Holy **it and we couldn’t call it that 🙂
- 2.0.24 Dee & John: When it comes to anodizing the real trick is finding a company that can get the job done right, we can’t emphasize that enough. Once we knew we found that we got every color they could give us. Guess you can say we’re painting a rainbow.
- 2.0.25 Dee & John: The vaping Jedi helped us find a material that doesn’t react to any juice.
- 2.0.26 Dee & John: Yes, you can feel free to vape anything on the market from “Blister”, Atomic-Fireball to Wicked Menthol. Nothing will melt our Who’s Your Daddy tanks. They can take all the melting juices and at the same time not leach any taste into your juice.
- 2.0.27 This also aids in cleaning. Just rinse it out with water and your good to go vape something else. Easy and simple, exactly what we were looking for.
- 2.0.28 Dee & John: The outside O-ring doesn’t see much action so you won’t notice it needs much maintenance. The inside O-ring is where all the action is with the cartomizer going in and out and the repetitive heating of the coils inside the cartomizer. So it’s going to vary with every user because of all the vaping variables.
- 2.0.29 The main thing to know is if you feel it’s getting harder to push the cartomizer through the caps with your Slap yo’ Mama it’s probably coming time to switch it out.
- 2.0.30 Dee: John is still vaping a prototype from way back when as his main tank and has yet had the need to change out his inside O-ring. I’ve changed mine out of my main tank probably 2-3 times in the last 6 months or so and we both vape melting “offenders”.
- 2.0.31 Mine could have been that I wasn’t putting the carto though at a 90-degree angle which will make it feel hard. After all we’re working with metal and it’s not forgiving. Also anytime your pushing your cartomizer through your tank remember to always support your caps.
- 2.0.32 Dee & John: Smoktech Big Daddy Dual Coil hands down in the Big Daddy Department. And for a shorter vape the Smoktech Lil’ Mama Single Coils, but that’s just us. When it comes down to it, it’s like Coke and Pepsi.
- 2.0.33 Some people think the Smoktech taste better, some people think the Boge taste better, and some people can’t tell a difference between them and think we’re all CraZy…lol. We don’t know if either company with their cartomizers have an edge over each other besides taste preference.
- 2.0.34 But they have been around long enough to work through the hurdles building things always bring.
- 2.0.35 Dee & John: It seems to be a tight race between the Boge and Smoktech. We do see we don’t stand alone in our favorites as our customers love our Smoktech Dual coil for Big Daddy tanks and Smoktech Single coil for Lil’ Mama tanks too. Although we do sell quite a bit of all our other cartomizers.
- 2.0.36 We sell our Smoktech cartomizers punched if you’re not into punching your own and not punched so if you want to save a little money punching your own, you have that option as well. The only reason we don’t sell our Boge cartos punched is because we don’t vape them and that’s a huge part of punching them.
- 2.0.37 We carry them for our customers who like Boge and like we said, it’s a tight race between the two. After all, can’t we all just vape along? Couldn’t help it:)
- 2.0.38 Dee & John: When we first started making tanks we were able to slide our cartomizers into the tank, thread side first with no leaks and having the security to pick our setups up by the tank. But we wanted more. We wanted to have an easier way to fill than pushing the carto off to the side, sometimes flooding it.
- 2.0.39 So we designed our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool to do that. And when we have something like that it’s just a matter of finding all the uses for it like inserting your cartos, the ease of installing the inside O-rings into your caps and more.
- 2.0.40 Now since we’ve had our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool we’ve tightened up our caps even more taking care of when the tolerances come in play to the larger side. This insures us that every cap is tight.
- 2.0.41 Dee: As John is a Desert Storm vet, he say’s it as “Happy to be of service. Now lets get it done and make it count.” So thank you again for helping us spread the word.
- 2.0.42 Dee & John: We are working on some things but it’s too early to say anything about them. But as far as the ones we can talk about; We are excitingly working on bringing some of our wooden mod stands to the market.
- 2.0.43 As far as when, we like the way you put it… in the pipeline. We highly recommend signing up for our newsletter on our site. We don’t send tons of mail but the ones we do will have updates on our products or coupon codes.
- 2.0.44 Dee & John: To continue to help every single person we meet that wants help to find an easy, reliable, durable awesome way to vape that makes life a little bit easier.
- 2.1 For the love of Vaping Epilogue
- 2.2 More Interview In Spinfuel:
Big Daddy Vapor – Spinfuel Interview with Dee & John
Spinfuel: I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be able to ask you both a few questions about the terrific “Who’s Your Daddy” Carto-tanks and “Slap Yo Momma” Adapter. And of course to find out a little bit more about the creative minds behind them.
Spinfuel: Well, thank you!
Spinfuel: You call your Big Daddy Vapor a “mod shop”. I love that. Why are you a “mod shop”?
Dee: Each one of our tanks is made by hand and each one is different, there’s no assembly line here punching out tanks. Also, our site is a collection of products John and I have found to be so very helpful to make our vaping lives easier.
Combined with information in our Vaping 101 that keeps on growing and How to Videos which we completely recommend taking the time to read and watch.
Spinfuel: How did the two of you come to vaping?
Dee & John: Our story is like so many others. With over 20yrs of smoking cigarettes for the both of us. We so much desired something different. A way we could have our nicotine without all the stinky clothes, nasty ashes, burning ourselves and everything else that came with that lifestyle.
Spinfuel: When did you launch Big Daddy Vapor?
Dee: We launched Big Daddy Vapor September 1st 2011. Although we were shown just how much people were fed up with their leaky, slidey tanks when we received a call from someone who was watching John work with getting the site up while it was live or “on air” a couple days before that.
Spinfuel: I have so many questions about these two incredible products, but choosing the right questions was more difficult than I thought it would be. Surely there are many “classified” aspects to the methodology and technology that went into inventing and making them. So I’m guess my first question would be: Why? Why did you decide to produce the tanks for your customers?
Dee & John: We fell in love with the dual coil cartomizer from Smoktech. But vaping to us was a yin/yang thing. The positive was all the things we could experience again like breathing, tasting our foods and having a refreshingly new sense of the word ‘smell’.
The negative was all the problems we had with our setups. We knew we wanted to find a way to tank that cartomizer. Once we achieved that and were vaping easily and happy, we knew then we could help others.
So once we found we could consistently provide a tank with no leaks, that we could pick up our setup by the tank, it was a no-brainer to help others find their vape too.
Dee: After that John actually started talking to a reseller and after showing them our tanks we were setup to produce for them. Then at the last moment, tanks made and in our hands they backed out.
What’s the saying’ “I will not enter the grave gently, rather skidding in sideways screaming Holy **it what a ride”.
Spinfuel: Why cartomizer-based tanks? Lately it’s all about clearomizers, minimizers, bottom coil Kanger’s and the like, why stick with cartomizers?
Dee & John: Because in our opinion we’ve tried them all and we think the cartomizers taste the best out of all of them. And once we made our tanks that work consistently and easily with our SYM multi-purpose tool there wasn’t a reason to keep looking. But rumor has it the bottom coil Kanger’s will work with our tanks.
Spinfuel: Obviously China owns the market on inexpensive, and even not-so-inexpensive tanks and clearomizers for the vaping community. Despite that, Big Daddy Vapor created two very successful American made products that surpass any tank coming out of China. Did you know there would be such a demand for a tank of this magnitude?
Dee & John: We’ve done the China tanks and we feel it’s the demand for a tank that is cared for from being just metal to an awesome tank. Machines that mass-produce don’t take the individual time we do with each and every tank.
The Who’s Your Daddy tank was made with our hands and given our energy. We’re invested in a way much more powerful than money and here to help our customers. We absolutely love our vaping family and chat with them often. Hi everyone!
But in the end, Thank you China for the inexpensive cartomizers, we can take it from there…lol
Spinfuel: The precision and craftsmanship that goes into making a WYD or Lil’ Momma tanks and the SYM adapter are unmatched really, and the grade of anodized aluminum is extremely high. Add to that the fact that they are crafted in the United States and you have one expensive tank. What made you think a tank of this quality and price would sell? Were you surprised by the demand?
Dee & John: We knew we weren’t the only ones out there that were having the problems with other vaping products. We were happy to hear the positive feedback from our customers. Actually, when we first started making our Who’s Your Daddy tanks our price was too high and we didn’t like that.
We knew right off the bat we weren’t going to settle for paying that price for material. Great thing was from the support of our customers loving our tanks we were able to buy from a different company that had HUGE minimums for order quantity and the material was better too.
Combine that with coming up with ways to get our tooling hardware to last longer, we were able to see our costs go down.
It was then we decided to drop the price and pass our savings to our customers instead of holding “meat on the bone” for resellers.
Spinfuel: In fact, the demand right now is so high that you limit the number of tanks that can be purchased. Do you see that limitation lasting very long?
Dee & John: The limit of 2 tanks is there because we build our tanks to serve our customers and not to sell to a reseller to sell to someone else. We are only 2 people and it will stay that way. We don’t ever see ourselves trusting someone to give our tanks the attention we do. And knowing we helped our vapers is our pride.
Spinfuel: Who came up with the names for your tanks and carto adapter? Why call them Who’s Your Daddy, Lil Momma and Slap Yo Momma?
Dee & John: For our ‘Who’s your Daddy’ tanks, it came from one of our awesome customers you said “if you ever get the opportunity to use Who’s your Daddy for a product name, you should”.
As far as our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool, we’re lovers of movies and one-liners. After all, this should be fun and easy not stressful like we associate the nasty analogs with. And our Slap yo’ Mama name it came from a movie where they were talking about BBQ that tasted so good it makes you wanna Slap yo’ Mama.”
So when we messed around with our first prototype it was the first thing that was said, well…. besides Holy **it and we couldn’t call it that 🙂
Spinfuel: The choice of colors is spectacular. How did you go about deciding on which colors you would ultimately wind up offering your customers?
Dee & John: When it comes to anodizing the real trick is finding a company that can get the job done right, we can’t emphasize that enough. Once we knew we found that we got every color they could give us. Guess you can say we’re painting a rainbow.
Spinfuel: You say that your tanks can handle any eLiquid the customer might want to throw at it. How did you accomplish that?
Dee & John: The vaping Jedi helped us find a material that doesn’t react to any juice.
Spinfuel: Are you saying that we can vape a heavy cinnamon eLiquid like Mountain Oak Vapors “Blister” or Ginger’s eJuice “Atomic Fireball”, and simply rinse it under water and start vaping something altogether different? How is that possible?
Dee & John: Yes, you can feel free to vape anything on the market from “Blister”, Atomic-Fireball to Wicked Menthol. Nothing will melt our Who’s Your Daddy tanks. They can take all the melting juices and at the same time not leach any taste into your juice.
This also aids in cleaning. Just rinse it out with water and your good to go vape something else. Easy and simple, exactly what we were looking for.
Spinfuel: The end caps have an incredible seal thanks to such high precision tooling and the selective use of O-Rings. Of course the end caps themselves will last forever, but how long should the O-Rings last before we would need to replace them?
Dee & John: The outside O-ring doesn’t see much action so you won’t notice it needs much maintenance. The inside O-ring is where all the action is with the cartomizer going in and out and the repetitive heating of the coils inside the cartomizer. So it’s going to vary with every user because of all the vaping variables.
The main thing to know is if you feel it’s getting harder to push the cartomizer through the caps with your Slap yo’ Mama it’s probably coming time to switch it out.
Dee: John is still vaping a prototype from way back when as his main tank and has yet had the need to change out his inside O-ring. I’ve changed mine out of my main tank probably 2-3 times in the last 6 months or so and we both vape melting “offenders”.
Mine could have been that I wasn’t putting the carto though at a 90-degree angle which will make it feel hard. After all we’re working with metal and it’s not forgiving. Also anytime your pushing your cartomizer through your tank remember to always support your caps.
Spinfuel: You offer both Boge and Smoktech pre-punched cartomizers for the “Who’s Your Daddy” tanks. Do either of you have a preference for one over the other? If so, what is it about that cartomizer that gives it the edge?
Dee & John: Smoktech Big Daddy Dual Coil hands down in the Big Daddy Department. And for a shorter vape the Smoktech Lil’ Mama Single Coils, but that’s just us.
When it comes down to it, it’s like Coke and Pepsi.
Some people think the Smoktech taste better, some people think the Boge taste better, and some people can’t tell a difference between them and think we’re all CraZy…lol.
We don’t know if either company with their cartomizers have an edge over each other besides taste preference.
But they have been around long enough to work through the hurdles building things always bring.
Spinfuel: The tanks are able to use a wide variety of cartomizers. On Big Daddy Vapor there are 6 different cartos for both the 5ML and 3ML tanks. Which cartomizer seems to be the most popular for the owners of the WYD tanks?
Dee & John: It seems to be a tight race between the Boge and Smoktech. We do see we don’t stand alone in our favorites as our customers love our Smoktech Dual coil for Big Daddy tanks and Smoktech Single coil for Lil’ Mama tanks too. Although we do sell quite a bit of all our other cartomizers.
We sell our Smoktech cartomizers punched if you’re not into punching your own and not punched so if you want to save a little money punching your own, you have that option as well. The only reason we don’t sell our Boge cartos punched is because we don’t vape them and that’s a huge part of punching them.
We carry them for our customers who like Boge and like we said, it’s a tight race between the two.
After all, can’t we all just vape along? Couldn’t help it:)
Spinfuel: Let’s talk about the Slap Yo Momma (SYM) adapter. The SYM is pure genius. But, was it “genius out of necessity” or an inspiration? In other words, was the SYM invented by you because getting a cartomizer into the end caps was so difficult, or was it invented to solve a problem that exists with many different cartomizer based tanks?
Dee & John: When we first started making tanks we were able to slide our cartomizers into the tank, thread side first with no leaks and having the security to pick our setups up by the tank. But we wanted more. We wanted to have an easier way to fill than pushing the carto off to the side, sometimes flooding it.
So we designed our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool to do that. And when we have something like that it’s just a matter of finding all the uses for it like inserting your cartos, the ease of installing the inside O-rings into your caps and more.
Now since we’ve had our Slap yo’ Mama multi-purpose tool we’ve tightened up our caps even more taking care of when the tolerances come in play to the larger side. This insures us that every cap is tight.
Spinfuel: What was it like to know you invented something so simple, so obvious, yet so utterly missed by an entire industry?
Dee: As John is a Desert Storm vet, he say’s it as “Happy to be of service. Now lets get it done and make it count.” So thank you again for helping us spread the word.
Spinfuel: Are there other products in the pipeline that you can talk about? Are there other products in the pipeline you can’t talk about?
Dee & John: We are working on some things but it’s too early to say anything about them.
But as far as the ones we can talk about; We are excitingly working on bringing some of our wooden mod stands to the market.
Spinfuel: Lastly, what’s next for Big Daddy Vapor?
Dee & John: To continue to help every single person we meet that wants help to find an easy, reliable, durable awesome way to vape that makes life a little bit easier.
For the love of Vaping
Epilogue
I really love these tanks, and after using the Slap Yo Momma adapter I don’t think I can ever think about cartomizers the same way again. I would lie to publically thank Dee and John of Big Daddy Vapor for taking time out of their busy schedule to talk to Spinfuel about these great products.
If you are interested in the Who’s Your Daddy Tanks for the Slap Yo Momma multi-purpose tool please check out the review the Spinfuel eLiquid Review Team put together.
– Julia Barnes
More Interview In Spinfuel:
An Interview With Vapebox Eliquid Subscription Service
The Black Note e-Liquid Interview
