Tim’s Vape Tips

A Few Tricks I’ve Learned

Greetings and salutations my friends, I have thought long and hard through my pain filled brain on what to write about this week.  It came to me that I have all these neat toys and tools to help in building coils, keeping my sub tanks, RDAs and my RTAs clean, and so on, and I have all this eliquid that I either bought or I received while at the World Vapor Expo down in Miami Beach last month. Why not pass along some of my Vape Tips?

Some of the e-juice I have is way too strong for me (in nicotine) and I need to dilute it with VG. So how do I dilute my e-juice and make sure the juice and the extra VG I added to it doesn’t separate?

I figured I was long past due for a Tim’s Vape Tips column to discuss some of what I use and what I do, under certain situations.

Cutting Down Nicotine Strength

For starters I do enjoy my e-juices, only problem is whenever I go to these shows I am generally given 3 mg nicotine strength. While that was great 6-9 months ago I am finding that I have been at 3 mg for well over a year, probably close to 2 years.

Vape Tips

I am finding of late that even if I mix it 50/50 at 1.5 mg nicotine level when I get into my really heavy vaping, not even realizing I’m doing so, a few hours later I have a nicotine headache.  I didn’t really connect the dots on this until just a couple days ago…seriously….yea….I know, I know….

So, now I have a boatload of e-juice which is at 3 mg nic level and it’s too strong…shit…now what?  Well I’ll do what I do any other time, I’m gonna dilute the e-juice.  Now then, don’t think for a second that I do ALL my juice this way…I don’t.  I do it when my e-juice supply is getting low and it is still a week ten days to payday, or if I buy and/or have given to me a juice that is way too strong for me…THEN I will go ahead and dilute my e-juice.

I dilute all my e-juice with plain old 99.9% food grade vegetable glycerin. How, or how much, depends; say you have a juice that is a 6 mg and you prefer 3 mg nic level.  It’s a simple 50/50 mix, if you have a 30 ml. bottle of your favorite brew and its staring at you with a big old 6 printed on the label.  You’re like…Well shit, now what?… In my case, I still have some VG left over from the last time I tried making my own e-juice (which failed terribly, but I still have half a gallon of VG).

I’m already at 3 mg with most of the e-juice I still have. I was diluting it 50/50, but like I said above, lately this 1.5 mg is giving me a nicotine headache.  So….I gotta drop my nic level even further down, at least until my new order of 0mg nicotine e-juice has arrived.

Some of my e-juice, I fear, will never be without just a touch of nicotine, I think, maybe, that it gives it…flavor?  Maybe, I can’t really say what or why, but for whatever reason some of my juices just taste better with a touch of nicotine in it.

I have one e-juice that I have started to get the nicotine level down to where it not only still remains a tasteful brew, but it’s not too lean either. So, I get my e-juice, VG, a bowl, and usually a bottle large enough to hold the new mixture, and maybe even a second smaller bottle so I can take it with me if I so desire.  To mix the VG and my juice I bought one of these cheap little battery operated whisk you see in the kitchen stores. The end of this whisk has like a coiled spring, it gets into whatever it is you are mixing and can froth up really well, except of course the VG/ejuice mix in your bowl.  I use the whisk, then shake the hell out of it for at least 3 minutes. When you see tiny little bubbles in your mixture, you know you’re about done.

I try and get a full 3 minutes, I let it all sit for maybe 5 minutes, the shake it for another 2 minutes, then part it out into smaller bottles if need be. Whenever I fill one of my tanks I shake the bottle, even if it’s a store bought e-juice at 0-nic, then shake it, it’s a good practice to get into, this way you will know that the juice and all its ingredients has separated.

If you have your new juice mixture where you want it, but it’s still a bit thick, you can always add a little bit of PG. In my case I have a very high sensitivity to PG, so that isn’t an option for me.

Nice thing is, I prefer a really thick, really flavorful e-juice, I get ALL the flavor, thick clouds are phenomenal, truly phenomenal! If you really, really need to thin out your juice, you can take no more than, say 2%-3% of distilled water, in an emergency situation you can even use tap water, if you have filtered water that’s better, but distilled water is the best to use.

I have never ever tried using tap water, but I have friends who actually have. But e-juice mixing is definitely something I take very seriously, I don’t want e-juice with tap water. Anyhow, this is MY way of diluting an ejuice that is too strong or I’m really low on, like down to say 60-80 mL. then and only then will I dilute.

I don’t know how many of y’all still wrap your own coils or even use an RDA or RTA for that matter.  I do, anything from my Hellboy RDA to my Tsunami RDA, (thank you Dave).  Or my Genesis RTA, (again, thank you Dave) or my old Lemo RTA, to my newest Dripbox and Dripbox 160, these all need coils, sometimes dual coils to work, ergo, you need something you can use to build your coils.

Vape Tips – Tools of the Trade

I have a couple of the Kuro Coilers left, and they work, but I also have a Coil Master v3 coiling jig.  What is so

nice about it is the fact the handle on it is twice as long as the Kuro is.  This gives you something you can really hang on to, gives you better control when building your coils.

If you want coils that are as close to what you can get in the B & M vape shops then get at least a set of Kuro Coilers, they are cheap enough now, and the Coil Master isn’t too expensive, still well within just about everyone’s vape budget.

Another handy little device, and these can be found ALL over the internet, Vape Tweezers.  Just a sweet bit of a kit, but has several practical uses.  From the ceramic tweezer tips, to the indents to enable or to remove a coil when it’s a bit too tight, to the larger end to where you can remove the base and/or top of your sub tank, just a nifty neat little kit that has a lot of uses.  I have seen these advertised on Amazon or Ebay for about $3 or $4 bucks. Hell, I might even buy myself a second set just to have on hand.

I am famous for using an object setting it down and then forgetting where it is later on.  Then it gets totally lost and then I’m shit outta luck for the next time I need something and I don’t have it.  Yes, I know, I know, you can get the ceramic tip tweezer, and get yourself a set of heavy gauge plastic pliers, so you can remove the base and/or top of your sub-tank.

Plastic pliers you say?  Oh yea, as a federally licensed amateur radio operator or ham radio operator I have a couple of sites I can go to where you can get these heavy duty or heavy gauge plastic pliers. There are needle nose type and a small style regular pliers.  But why when you can spend a third of what you would on the other two or three items when you can pay say $4 for a set of vape tweezers!

Now onto my latest Vape Tip, and a true treasure, another trinket I bought from Coil Master; the Ultrasonic Cleaner!  This my friends is definitely the future of cleaning one’s sub tank, drip tips, hell even the coils I put in there, plus so many other little odds and ends.

Those vape tweezers we just talked about?  Those ends get dirty, even your regular set of ceramic tip tweezers the ceramic ends will get dirty after a time.  What better way to clean it than in an ultrasonic cleaner?

I know you’ve seen these, these are pretty much similar to the ones you see in a jewelry store, only those ones have alcohol or something in it to clean your rings and such.  Same principle, only the one I have uses regular tap water, hot tap water.  Coil Master was having a special on this item, instead of $40 it was marked down to $30.

I received mine just yesterday, I wasn’t expecting this until Monday.  Didn’t do much with it last night.  After making sure there were no issues with the cleaner, (didn’t expect any nor did I find any) I got the 8-9 tanks I had out that needed to be desperately cleaned. I did 3 at a time.  Took them apart as much as I could, drip tips came off, glass tube came off, hell even the coils came out and it all went into the basket, filled it with hot water up to the fill line, plugged it in….3 minutes later, I let it sit for a minute or so, then started another cleaning cycle.  Did that 3 times, doing a double cleaning, just because a few of my sub tanks have never had a really, really good cleaning.

I take them apart and wash them in really hot water, let the parts air dry, about the only part that doesn’t get as clean as I wanted was the coils.

This time I took a chance, just to see if it would work or not.  It did, even my wife who doesn’t normally notice things like this said of the last 3 of the tanks and pieces that I cleaned and were sitting on a towel on our kitchen table said that the tanks and everything looked brand new, from my wife who rarely notices much of anything concerning vaping, that’s high praise indeed.

My New Coil Master 521 Tab

Finally, last but not least of my vape tools the Coil Master 521 Tab, this is the neatest piece of plastic and aluminum I’ve yet to see.  If you are building coils I have always had to scrounge for something I could set my Atty on so I could tear out the old cotton, clean and do a general check of my Atty if the coils needed to be tightened or if the coils had spread out a bit I would need to fire it and heat the coils so I could make it all right and tight again. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

Well, enter the 521 Tab, this little thing runs on 1x 18650 battery, you can screw in your atty, pull out the old cotton, take some tidbits of cotton swab out any extra juice make sure it all clean and dry. Hit the switch and you can fire the atty, tighten up any coils that have spread out, anything you can think of doing with your Atty on your mod you can do on the 521 Tab.

I am out of energy now, though there were a few Vape Tips I still want to tell you about, and I’m sure I’ll get around to it.  I am still waiting to see a neurosurgeon, and with a heavy or semi heavy schedule this week, I have therapy tomorrow…Monday 7/11, in the afternoon, going over to see my friend tomorrow for coffee and try and solve the world’s problems, we’ve been trying for almost ten years, still haven’t succeeded yet, but hey…we keep trying.  Thursday its back up to Orlando to pick up our son at camp, then to our adopted daughter’s, pick up the grandkids and then home we come.

Thursday is gonna be one hell of a day, our grandson has football practice from 6-8 in the evening!  Which means we won’t get home until about 9:45-10:00, and we will leave home probably around 9 or ten in the morning.  Definitely not looking forward to Thursday, then again I am, you know?  That said, I want to wish you all to have a most excellent week ahead, hopefully it will be as stress free as possible.  From now until next time I will bid all y’all adieu, be well, stay safe, God bless, and….VAPE ON!

TIM