JimB

Hi All, I am a retired American living in the Philippines. I have been vaping for almost 2 years. I started mixing e liquid about 6 months ago.I have experimented with flavors, blends, steeping, resistance, wattage, PG/VG percentage, and almost everything else that can effect the vaping flavor/experience for vapors. I have noticed on Youtube and many of the forums that even experienced vapors don't take these many factors into account or explain them well enough for beginners to understand. When is comes to DIY e liquid what you mix can taste good or bad depending on the mod and atty you are using. If you are using a tank system(Vivi Nova) you will get less flavor than if you use a dripper. I mix and sell e liquid where I live commercial vendors are really expensive but, mainly, to give the customer a product that will work the best with the equipment they use. I will test their equipment for atty resistance, voltage drop, battery voltage and repair or recommend changes like atty resistance. I have a questionaire for them to fill out and then that goes to a spread sheet that even includes the steeping time for their flavors in e liquid........Yes steeping is an inportant part of e liquid. Different types and brands have steeping periods. Taboccos seem to have the longest(2 weeks to 1 month) and Sweets seem to do well in 2 to 5 days. I use a Chi Forged dripping attyat 2.2 ohms with a Vamo VV/VW mod in the wattage setting with stacked 2 18350 batteries. Do not stacked batteries in a standard mod!!!!!! I mix my "all day vape" in a 50ml bottle. I mix the flavors and the PG no VG yet and then let that steep for 1 week and about 2 days before I use it I add the VG. It comes out the same as a 3 week steep. Same color, taste, and same vapor. I use a VG/PG 65/35%. I have and use an ultrasonic cleaner that I use for customers orders and it does cut down on the steeping time significantly. I use it 30 min a day for 2 days. For flavors other than Tobacco it works fine. By all means experiment with flavor %'s. But also know that a high % of flavor doesn't always mean more taste. The equipment you use may be the limiting factor.

So far what I have figured out(through a lot of experimenting) That more is not always better. The first experiment was Desert Ship at 5% with 65/35 VG/PG with 18mg Nicotine in 3, 5ml bottles. Bottle 1: I tried right away. Not real good(weak). Bottle 2: I used an ultra sonic cleaner for a total of 1 hour. Really good but really strong. Bottle 3: I let it steep for 15 days and it can out tasting and feeling just like the "Ultra Steeping Method". Now I use 3% and its great. All I know is that I am one of those guys that wants to taste a new e juice right now but is does require steeping. Espescialy the tobacco flavors. The ultra sonic cleaner really works. I paid about $25 for a small home type that hold 500ml of water. I do the steeping for 30 mins. The cleaner will warm the water to a good temp in that time. The next day I do the same thing and it seems to be the same taste, smell, and color as the 2 week steeping. Some to the flavors have a recommended 4 week steeping period. For those I just do 30 mins for 4 days and it seems to work for me. But whatever the steeping method, it is important. There is no instruction manual for this so I do all my testing in 3 to 5ml batches.

A Vivi Nova is bigger version of the CE4, CE5 and the wicks can be replace. Be carefull buyin just any tank. Some tanks are for people that have been vaping for a lone time and some are just pieces of junk. I wouldn't buy a DCT tank until you have a little more exposure to the "world of attys". I use drip type attys some small and some big. But if you don't like to put drops in more often then move into those slowly. Go to Youtube and look at the reviews of whatever tank you decide on. The Vamo was a good choice and 1/3rd the price of the Pro Vari and half the price of all the rest. I have 2 of them and love them. Good luck and keep on vaping.

I have 2 Vamos. I set them at 7 watts. I have tested the single 18650 against the stacked 18350 a couple of different ways. My batteries are AW IMR LiMin. The 18650's are 3800 mah and the 18350's are 800 mah. The first way I tested was to put an 18650 in one Vamo and stacked 18350's in the other. Both have a chi forged drip atty and both at 2.2 ohms resistance. I put a #1 on one and a #2 on the other. Placed them side by side and all day went 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2 etc. Once in a while I would forget which one was next but not often. When it came time to go to bed I checked my notes and found out that I was on my 3rd 18650 and still had the same set of 18350's. All day without changing them. Then I test the 18650 one day and the 18350's for one day. I had changed the 18650 four times for all day. With the 18350's they still had 6.4v(6.2v is low voltage). I am getting well over 60%more vaping time with the stacked setup. Then I wanted to know a little about how this works. It seems that the overhead on a vv/vw is high managing the RMS controller and the voltage booster. With the stacked setup the you have more than enough power to take care of this overhead. With the single 18650 once a great while it would turn off before low volts and I would have to turn it on again and it would change RMS to AV mode. For 2 weeks now, now problems and only have to change batts once a day. In other forums I have read that some people are afraid about melt down and exploding conditions. First: With the Vamo if it were to explode the end cap is designed to blow out away from you and as far as a melt down that gets down to atty's with less than 1.5 ohms resistance. A lot of people don't seem to realise that if you put dual coils of 1.5 ohms your total resistance is .75 ohms, getting real close to a dead short circuit. If you want 1.5 ohms in a dual atty each coil has to be 3 ohms. resistance in parellel devides. Below 1.5 ohms you are doing serious damage to the life span of the battery.......All that said I love stacked batteries.