Is it just me.....

[muckyboy]

OK so after my two year vaping anniversary I finally decided to take the plunge into mixing.

Like any sensible vaper I came here first for advice and excellent guides like Grizwald's gave me the knowledge I think I need.

I'm not in love with the mixing calculators though. Maybe it's just me but they all seem a bit "cart before the horse"

I am patiently waiting for my 7.0% nic PG base and some concentrates from UK flavours and I have all my bottles, syringes and pipettes ready along with my Boots Glycerine. I want to make VG heavy mixings so i'll be adding just VG to the PG base & flavour concentrates and i'm aiming for 12mg/ml (ish)

My problem with the calculators is that you have to put in your target strength only to be told you need to add 10.39675ml of base, 7.1485761ml of Flavouring and 25.924765467ml of VG to get your desired strength. I'm unlikely to be that good with a syringe. I just want a calculator that tells me 10ml base + 10ml flavour + 30ml VG will be somewhere in the 10-14mg/ml range and about 2/3 VG to 1/3 PG (+- 10%)

I've tried 3 or 4 calculators and they all seem to work that way round rather than how my brain, pen & paper seem to see it. Maybe i'm being silly. Is having the strength & PG/VG ratio exactly right really that important?

Maybe it is just me...

[Postmodern Smoking]

Hi muckyboy, round everything to a reasonable, 'syringeable' value (our calculator is set to 1 decimal place). I don't think that there's a calculator out there that approaches the issue the way you would like (i.e. round values for the ingredients to produce an approximate strength)

Small errors won't be detectable in the vape, so just round the values.

[jevans]

No it's not just you muckyboy , I use a pocket calculator as well!
One thing the "calculators" can't tell you is how much you can mix from a certain volume of concentrate at a specific %.
EG. If you have 10ml of concentrate and you want it at say 12%, just divide 10 by 0.12 and you get 83 ml.
I read that as 80ml.
So you want 12mg nicotine!
Your total nicotine will be 80 x 12 which = 960mg
Divide that by your base nicotine strength and you get 960/70 = 11.29
So 11 ml is near enough.
You now have 21 ml of juice, make up to 80ml with VG (IE add 59ml) and you have your juice at 12% concentrate, 12mg(14%) nicotine and 74% VG.
It took far longer to write this than to do the maths!

Jim

[lairey]

muckyboy, what I would do, is just set the calculator to a 50/50 mix... put in your recipe and calculate, then measure out your nic base and concentrates, rounding up or down as necessary, then just top up to the required total volume with VG, ignoring the PG/VG amounts on the calculator, but just adding them together as a rough check

[Perpetua]

I simply couldn't mix without a Mixing specific calculator . . . don't get bogged down with being accurate to the inth degree muckyboy. It really isn't necessary for a home mixer.

As Dave Postmodern Smoking says, just round up or down to whatever is the nearest ' full ' measure.

My favourite calculator has always been breaktru's:

ejuice.breaktru.com/

Mixing as well as a means to an end, ought to be enjoyable . . . not an exercise that ties you up in knots over the calculations.

[smifee]

It won't take you long to realise 'near enough is good enough'.

I mix by weight. Not to be accurate to .01 of a gram but to minimise the clean up after mixing.

[Ripshod]

Feb 24, 2015 9:32:46 GMT smifee said:

It won't take you long to realise 'near enough is good enough'.

I mix by weight. Not to be accurate to .01 of a gram but to minimise the clean up after mixing.

I never looked at it that way. Great tip, will give that a go

[chicken]

I gave up diy mixing due to poor results, may be i should try again

[OneDay]

The mixing calculators don't use real-world measures. They have no knowledge of tads, dollops, smidgens, near-enoughs or touches. So you have to apply some real-world knowledge to what they tell you.
5.347264 is 5.
5.88934 is a tad under 6.
1.23678 is near enough 1.
0.3456 is a smidge.

and so on. Unless you're some sort of sensory genius, your taste buds won't know the difference.

[Perpetua]

Feb 24, 2015 15:10:02 GMT chicken said:

I gave up diy mixing due to poor results, may be i should try again

Do chicken, it really isn't difficult . . . getting to know your flavours and what suits your individual tastes is part of a successful mix, as well as having some patience if it's a recipe that takes a little time for ingredients to blend/steep.

Try simple ' one shot ' mixes first perhaps, whilst you get your mixing hand in maybe? There's an element of confidence involved ( like most things! ) if you master a couple of simple brews, then hopefully they would give you the confidence & encouragement to progress further - if you wished.

Tjuice & Pink Spot are great for doing just that I think . . . .

www.chefsvapour.co.uk/32-pink-spot-concentrates

www.chefsvapour.co.uk/43-t-juice-concentrates

[phtumshk]

I never got on with the calculators.
The way I do it now is I mix a 100ml of plain PG/VG with a slightly higher Nic level than I want to vape.
I then just add my desired flavours to a 10/30ml bottle and top up with my nic mix.

[yourgurnard]

Feb 24, 2015 15:20:04 GMT OneDay said:

The mixing calculators don't use real-world measures. They have no knowledge of tads, dollops, smidgens, near-enoughs or touches. So you have to apply some real-world knowledge to what they tell you.
5.347264 is 5.
5.88934 is a tad under 6.
1.23678 is near enough 1.
0.3456 is a smidge.

and so on. Unless you're some sort of sensory genius, your taste buds won't know the difference.

Yep! Spot On! (Or Pos. a Smidge Under!........ )

[Deleted]

This is the one i use and it does it to various decimal points (I think it's 2) but you can set everything - even the volume you are making and save recipes

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.boggi.esig

For a freebie I have no complaints

PS. Don't sweat the small stuff and vape on!

[whiteshep]

You might need to make a few mixes before you get one that just makes it all worth while for me rhubarb and custard but got about five early mixes that are not so great vapable but nothing special. Patients is a must have but if you persevere you will reap the rewards better flavour, lower cost and best of all zero chance of running out .

[muckyboy]

Thanks to everyone for all the input.

In the end I made my own calculator in excel where I input my whole numbers of ml of base, diluents and flavours and the outputs are PG/VG ratio, strength and % flavouring ( I got some single and some triple concentrates so I aimed for 20% and 7/8% respectively)

I made my first 5 mixes last night and the initial testing on a dripping atty even before steeping has been surprisingly good! Good enough to start Vaping one of them straight away as it's better than my purchased juice!

I'll try to post a pic of the spreadsheet to show how simple it is....