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Johnson Creek Valet Is THE Stocking Stuffing
If you’ve been reading Spinfuel eMagazine for even a short while you know that some of us love to use cartomizers. You probably also know that I talk about my Johnson Creek Vea quite a bit. For me, and for many thousands of others, the Vea is the perfect balance between small and lightweight, and big performance. I love vaping away with my Vea, and I love all the accessories you can buy for it, including that awesome leather case that holds two Vea batteries. So obviously, when something new comes out for the Vea I’m right there, itching to give it a try. (and of course buying it)
Today I’ve been spending the morning hours filling up a bunch of Vea Cartomizers with this brand new product from Johnson Creek called the Valet. It is, in a word…fan-freaking-tastic! Finally, someone figured out the absolute best way to fill a cartomizer, and wouldn’t you know, it would be Johnson Creek Enterprises.
The Valet
Johnson Creek launched their newest Vea accessory this morning and it’s called the Valet (patent-bending!), cause, well… it is. This simple, easy to use item is the best way to fill cartomizers that I have ever seen or used. The Valet doesn’t just fill a cartomizer, it saturates it completely, giving you the ability to create your own ‘professional level’ prefilled cartomizers every bit as good as the prefilled carts you buy from Johnson Creek.
Though honestly, I don’t think Johnson Creek has like 500 people using Valets and filling Vea carts for their prefilled line of Johnson Creek Smoke Juice… I can see it in my mind’s eye though, 500 people dressed in white lab coats sitting at these long picnic style tables with stacks of empty cartomizers and bottles of JC Smoke Juice, filling one after another and sending them to another department to be sealed up in the blister packs.
In all seriousness, I’ve filled roughly 20 Vea cartomizers in the past two hours, and the only reason it took 2 hours was because I filled them with half a dozen different flavors.
How It Works
If you’re a Vea owner you’ll probably buy one of these today, at $9.95 it’s a steal and it’s going to make your life so much easier that it would be silly not to get one. So once you do you’ll get the full instructions on how to use it, but I’m going to give you the short version to give you an idea of how simple it really is, and how great it truly works.
The Valet is comprised of two pieces. One screws on top of the bottle and the other is akin to a syringe. The piece that fits on the bottle has a plastic tube with a red stopper tip that you remove when you want to fill a cartomizer.
After you’ve chosen your favorite flavor, or the flavor you feel like vaping at the moment, you screw on the Valet top and remove the red stopper. Then you take a Vea cartomizer, Rev 2 or Rev 3, remove the black tip from the carto, and slip the cartomizer down into the short tube sticking up from the bottle. Insert the cartomizer with the screw-on tip facing into the bottle. Make sure it’s snug.
At this point you take the syringe-looking piece and slip it over the cartomizer that is now sticking up from the bottle. Making sure to hold both the bottle and the syringe-like item, turn it all upside down.
At this point you plug back the syringe-like plunger until the eLiquid from the bottle has zoomed past the cartomizer and filled the syringe with 1ML (or so) of juice. Stop for a moment and marvel at the simplicity of this.
With a flip of wrist(s) turn the bottle and syringe-thing over again so that the bottle is on the bottom and the syringy thing is sticking straight up in the air. Now push down on the plunger and fill your cartomizer. Boom!
To make sure it’s completely saturated and there is no juice left in the syringe it’s a good idea to push down on the plunger 4 or 5 times, like you would a stopped up sink. Doing this pushes all the juice out of the middle post in the cartomizer as well as making sure the cartomizer is ideally filled.
Remove the syringe-thing and set it aside, then lift the cartomizer out of the plastic tube sticking up from the bottle. Wipe it off with a paper towel or a cloth, just to make sure there isn’t an errant drop of juice anywhere, place the black cartomizer tip back on the end of the cart and set it aside.
Repeat until you’re stocked up on the number of prefilled cartomizers you want, or you can change flavors by unscrewing the cap part and screwing it on a different flavored bottle. Repeat as needed…
For the best results let them sit for a few minutes (I think I said that already). That’s all there is to it. Now, I’m pretty dense, my wife calls me Peter Griffin of all people, but even I was able to do this with ease. Not a single cartomizer got messed up, and the results have been magnificent. (If you knew me you’d know this was a big deal)
The Absolute No-Kidding Truth
I’ve been filling my own cartomizers for 2 years now. I use probably 10-15 cartomizers a week, that’s in addition to my Canteens, and my other non-Vea hardware I use. I know every method out there for filling cartomizers; I’ve tried them all. The one I used most is the “Peter Griffin Method”, which is using a dropper and filling them a drop at a time. drip…drip..drip…I continue to drip juice into the cartomizers until they look saturated. Takes about 5 minutes for me to get them to the point where I think they are full. So, if I’ve been doing it this way, and every other way, can I honestly say more than the Valet is simply a time-saver? Yes, yes I can. Cause here’s what happens to me every single time, no matter how I fill my cartomizers…
I can vape a so-called filled cartomizer for about 15-20 minutes and then I have to top it off. Then several minutes later I have to do it again… and I believed that was the cost I paid for using cartomizers. I like the way cartomizers taste, and I like the vapor production, I just do.
When I began filling my Vea cartomizers this morning I put the first one that I had filled on my Vea battery after letting it sit for about 5 minutes. That was more than 2 hours ago as I write this. Yet, this is the first time ever that I have not had to top off my cartomizer. Not once. There are no dry hits, no gurgling, only awesome flavor and tons of vapor. I’m being absolutely open here, somehow I have never been “optimally” filling my cartomizers because if I can vape this cartomizer that I am using right now for the past couple of hours without a single dry hit or the need to top it off I must have been doing it wrong.
I am beyond impressed. The Valet works like nothing I’ve seen before. If you use cartomizers then you know what I’m talking about.
Stocking Stuffer?
If you’re using a Vea and Vea cartomizers this is a must-have product, without a doubt, a must-have product. If you know someone that uses a Vea then this is the perfect stocking stuffer gift, providing of course you celebrate Christmas. If you don’t then you’ll look silly filling a sock with one of these.
Now Something Johnson Creek Probably Doesn’t Want Me To Mention…
Or maybe they do, I don’t know. I didn’t ask them. I also didn’t tell them I was going to review this. I just did it. That’s the way I am, I just “do” things.
As much of a fan that I am of the Johnson Creek Vea I do use other products too. I use Kanger Single Coil cartomizers by the truckload. I would use Vea cartomizers all the time if I could afford them, but I get Kanger Carts for $1.50 a 5-pack from a vendor friend, so you know…
I also use other eLiquids (gasp!) That being the case I wondered if this incredible device, this Valet product, this perfect carto-filler, would work on non-Vea cartomizers and eLiquids.
It does.
Specifically, it works perfectly with Mountain Oak Vapors bottles. The bottle cap size is identical, so why wouldn’t it? And the Kanger cartomizer fits perfectly. What I’m saying here is that even if you don’t own a Vea, (shame on you!) or use Johnson Creek Smoke Juice exclusively, you can use the Valet. It won’t work on ALL bottles naturally, but if the bottles you have are the same cap size as a bottle of Johnson Creek then it will work. I don’t have any Boge cartomizers on hand so I can’t say for sure that it would work with them, but it does with Kanger.
I’ll end this review with this… Somehow I have never been able to fill a cartomizer as well as they can be filled. Obviously, now that I’ve used the Valet I know this to be true. For myself, I’m almost giddy about the Valet because when it comes down to it, I’m a cartomizer Vaper…. Mostly. Someday I may even rich enough to buy Vea cartomizers at retail. If that happens then that’s what I’ll do. But, I will never again try to fill a cartomizer without the Valet; do otherwise would be too stupid, even for a Peter Griffin.
