Coming up a cloud. Where vapists gather!

[Jaeger]

I've officially given up on my 26650 project and caved in.
I bought a quad-18650 mod.
...
Me, I'm vaping away with going on half a horsepower.

--Jaeger

[DerGolgo]

I've officially given up on my 26650 project and caved in.
I bought a quad-18650 mod.
...
Me, I'm vaping away with going on half a horsepower.

--Jaeger

I only just remembered. The first circumnavigation of the globe on a two-wheeled motor-vehicle was done by two guys on mopeds with just under one half horsepower ... and now, only 110 or so years later, that much power fits in my lungs.

[wheezy e]

I've been vaping for a couple years but haven't quit smoking entirely. My typical routine is to vape all week then get beer and smokes on the weekend. I should try a higher nicotine juice when drinking, I usually run 3-4mgs. I've been getting juice from this guy who i worked with at my last job, he only makes 3 flavors strawberry cheesecake, key lime pie (both have a great gram cracker crust on the exhale) & a "sweet cream espresso" but they're way better than anything i've bought online or at shops, I don't get tired of any of them. $10 for 120ml.

I started out with little ego type stuff then got an ipv3 that serves me well but is huge & i hate carrying the thing around so i just got an eleaf pico, single 18650 & is really tiny, i dig it. Tanks i use are 3 innoken isubs, they are cheap, not too tall and have good flavor. I have a royal hunter mini dripper that i bought to use without wicks for mj concentrates (yay colorado), works ok but gets gunked up & sticky making it hard to pull apart to add more material. Had to ditch the rubber o-rings because i couldn't get it back together once it got all stickied up, the sticky mess seals it up fine without them but when i clean it it'll fall right apart without the o-rings. looking for a small dripper set up for a single coil that uses a "sleeve" where you can pull it apart to get to the deck but just pull the top off to refill. I'm thinking of a vertical inverted dome or cone shaped coil that I could put the goods in like a bowl so it won't all run off the first time it heats up. more surface area like a clapton or twisted would probably be best but it needs to have a higher resistance, something like 1.5-2ohms is what I'm thinking. I've not made any coils but I'd like to get some rebuildable tanks along with another dripper to replace the hunter. I'm also thinking about genesis styled tanks like the avocado & wondering what it'd be like to just drop a dab on the coil/wick saturated with e-juice. could be just the ticket or it could leave crap on the wick that'd ruin the taste of the ejuice afterward. Can't find anything online about someone doing that so i'll just have to try it i guess. I had good luck re-purposing the old ego tanks for mmj juice I made from wax/shatter but the fact that the goods won't mix with VG, only PG & PEGs means it's kind of harsh.

I have no knowledge about building coils but i do have a multi-meter & drill bits, just wondering what wire to buy to make higher ohm coils. i guess if I'm working with a single coil that'll double the ohms over two coils built the same as the single, right?

[motorpsycho67]

Vaping is just as annoying as smoking to us non-smokers.

There, I said it.

[DerGolgo]

[quote="motorpsycho67"]Vaping is just as annoying as smoking to us non-smokers.

There, I said it.[//quote]

a) As I've finally managed to kick it again myself, I'm also a non-smoked. Please don't speak on my behalf.
b) Non-vapers complaining are as annoying as non-vapers complaining, regardless of whether that non-vaper smokes or not.

And then I went on a rant. See the spoiler tags.

Spoiler

Show

Western civilization had it's people hooked on cigarettes for well over a half century before serious noise about health effects started. Tolerating smokers to one degree or another was still the norm when I started smoking in the 1990s. There were no laws against smoking in bars or restaurants, trains and even airplanes had smokers' sections.
Yes, that was all pretty disgusting, even I see that now.
But this civilization raised itself over a billion smokers. Who poison themselves and the people and world around them.
In contrast, nobody has yet found serious health effects from vaping, and it's been around since about 2001 in parts of the world. That's a long term experiment right there.
To us ex-smokers, whom vaping helped to quit, puritan attitudes complaining about whatever we do, anything that is not abstinence, they are infuriating and not very helpful, either.
"Fucckit, if I'm catching static either way, I'll go back to cigarettes."
I've seen this happen, I've had such thoughts myself.
Switching from cigs to vaping is possible, but not very easy, actually. Non-smokers, be they vapers or nicotine-abstainers, should be applauding vaping. Even non-vapers benefit from breathing air that is not laden with particulate pollution, carbon-monoxide, hundreds of toxic chemicals that the second-hand smokers have been complaining about since forever. They should be applauding sidewalks not littered with cigarette butts.
They should be applauding their fellow man not dying long before their time because of a stupid decision they made as a teenager.

Smokers have long been demonized as slow-murderers, corruptors of children, as being so cavalier and irresponsible with their own health, they don't deserve any sympathy when they die.
Telling someone they are just as annoying like the evil smokers is telling them they shouldn't take pride in having managed to kick the smokes. That the effort they made doesn't even matter.

Asking them, in a polite but firm manner, to vape elsewhere since the vapours are unpleasant and distracting, that is something I see no problem with. That is an honest conflict between adult people who respect one another.

[jae]

"Fucckit, if I'm catching static either way, I'll go back to cigarettes."

My dentist recently retired, and another guy took over his practice. In the routine "get to know you" questioning he asked if I smoked. Told him I used to, but had moved over to vaping and was working on getting off nicotine. At the mention of vaping (I shit you not), he looked at me and said "Just go back to cigarettes".

Fuck that guy.

[Jaeger]

...he looked at me and said "Just go back to cigarettes".

Fuck that guy.

Whaa? Yeah, fuck 'im indeed. I'm not going to try to pretend that I'm skeptical of these things being "ok" let alone "healthy," but it doesn't take a fuckin' PhD to know that vapers don't get all the other delightful side-effects of smoking like being short of breath or "lung butter."

--Jaeger

[DerGolgo]

At the mention of vaping (I shit you not), he looked at me and said "Just go back to cigarettes".

Fuck that guy.

Regardless of how safe or unsafe vaping is ... a health professional suggesting you go back to smoking?
Yeah, dentists ain't lung doctors. But what, that guy prefers the stench of burnt tobacco, so his patients should all go get lung cancer and shit?

[DerGolgo]

I managed to break my Guardian III, so I went shopping for another pipe-shaped, variable wattage mod. And I found one.


It's the iJoy Elitair Pipe. Mine is in black, though.
Haven't tried the atomized that came with it.
What I've found:
a) it works as it should. 75W mod with all the VW and temperature-control features you'd expect from a modern mod. Even counts the seconds when you fire.
b) it has more buttons, so is MUCH easier to use than the Guardian III.
c) it's only about half the physical size of the Guardian III. Seriously. This wouldn't ruin the line of your suit.
d) the square-ish shape around the display means I can rest it on the table and lean it against something, no worries, thus keeping the atomizer in the right orientation. The Guardian III wouldn't do that.

[Jaeger]

It's the iJoy Elitair Pipe. Mine is in black, though.

Interesting. Teh Googlez make it look like it takes a premade coil -- that right?

--Jaeger

[DerGolgo]

It has a standard 510 connector. Any atomizer with a 510 will fit.
The atomizer that is included is for per-made coils, two of those are also included.
I've just tried it.
Flavor is not so amazing, but it makes a pretty decent amount of cloud for something its size.

[jae]

Interesting. I've yet to try a setup that beats my invader III and Billow V3 plus setup (though I've not really been looking), and I've completely abandoned my other gear because of it.

I like the look of this pipe-shaped mod, but I'm hesitant to spend money on something I doubt I'd use.... then again, after reading a couple of different reviews, I'm really curious.

[DerGolgo]

I only have it for when I'm out of the home. Got too many people complaining about the big clouds I'd make otherwise.
Also, it looks moderately elegant and allows me to use it for the ultimate pointing-gesture.

[DerGolgo]

Anyone still using pre-made coilheads. This should indeed work with most types of coilheads, so long as you haven't already burnt the cotton in there.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uokI7gbN7cI[/media]

[jae]

nice. I picked up a Smok TFV4 tank to try it out and have been using their coils very similar to this, and my juice is definitely not playing well with the cotton, but it hasn't been the easiest tank to find replacement coils for. Curious to try this, but at the same time, it sounds like it takes a lot more effort than just rewicking a buildable coil.

[DerGolgo]

Yeah, compared to re-wicking your own coils, this is an unreasonable amount of effort.
I, too, have a TfV4. It's the one I take along when I go to hospital again.
Little trick that brother Jaeger came up with, which I have adopted and which works quite well.
Poke some holes in it. Take a fine-ish sewing needle and poke a hole into the cotton, through the little opening on the side. Or two or three holes, actually. All the way through, until you get resistance. Will allow much more juice to get to the coils, allowing higher wattages without charring/burning the wick to quick.

[DerGolgo]

So I killed another mod. It happens.

I know how I killed it, how to not kill it again, and was rather happy with it, so I bought another one. Glutton for something or another.

Didn't fancy yet another black one, so I decided to go fabulous - gold, motherfucker, GOLD!

This here is the only side that had been pictured with the listing:

IMG_20181105_095302.jpg

But, when I unwrap it, I see the other side.

IMG_20181105_095239.jpg

Well, hello there. Sheer chance? Serendipitous?

It's called the "Dovpo M VV", btw. It's variable voltage, so instead of lazily setting a wattage, you gotta fine-adjust the voltage (wattage increases with the square of the voltage, so it's a good thing it requires a screwdriver or the like to adjust). Unlike other VV mods, it has more than a single LED. While blinking out the error messages is as cryptic as any other VV mod (where you have to count blinkies to work out the error message). What it does use the quartet of LEDs for is to show battery charge, which is handy. Button is in a slightly odd position, but very comfortable. Should you find yourself using one, take care not to over-tighten the atomizer. The 510 thread on the mod may break loose and you'll eventually twist loose the wires soldered onto it on the inside.
Other than that, it'll handle 35 Amps, which works out to a maximum ~280W with the 8V output. It's advertised for 300W in places, which'd be 37.5 Amps. That's not quite as much as some others, but for a dual-battery mod, it's plenty, and you'd likely cook off your hands if you hit the resistance-sweet-spot that'd get you there.
Because building a modern VV mod that shows battery charge without such would be more effort than building it with, it also has over-current, short-circuit, and deep-discharge protection. Pretty neat little fella.
The black design features are raised, which makes it not quite slippery, it sits nice in the hand. There are a number of colors available, the original color-selection (also still available) had a textured-polymer-coating sort of affair, with an engraved sort of pattern, which is pretty handy in the hand, too.

[DerGolgo]

IMG_20181107_172042.jpg

Here, you see what is immediately left of my keyboard. I just reach out, grab one, and make clouds. Big clouds. For scale: Those heat-sinks all my atomizers are sitting on, they are 25mm diameter. A hair over an inch.
On the left is the 46 mm Fat Boy, next the 32 mm Euphrat, then my favorite, the gloriously high-flowing 30 mm Vaperz Cloud Mega Tank, aka VCMT. Once, that was just the biggest RTA that there was to be had. On the far right, the Mason Dumptank, at 40 mm.

IMG_20181107_172137.jpg

Here, this is my "on the go" kit. Not only does it let me point with the pipe, but it makes smaller clouds, so as not to terrify the peasantry. The atomizer is the Aromamizer Plus. My favorite RTA for flavor, 30 mm, but not as high-flow as the VCMT. As you can see, the metal has some surface ... "character", yes, character. It's a clever design, but I had managed to jam up the thread and had to resort to the pipe-wrench to take it apart.

There was a time when, because the technology changed just so goddamn quick, I'd have a new atomizer every month or so. I've accumulated quite a collection.

But it's been a yea since I bought anything new. And that was a dripper. Well over a year since I bought a new RTA, which was the Aromamizer.


The Dumptank is 40mm monster, with vast liquid capacity.
But unfortunately rather restricted liquid-flow to the deck, and an undersized chimney.
I've spent many a month wondering how I could modify it. Spent some time trying to find a hacker-space with a mill and lathe capable of handling stainless steel.
But any modification would have to be extensive. Besides the restricted flow, the AFC-ring is tough to move and goes the wrong way, so opening it up after a refill will always unscrew it from the mod a little. Also, the top has no real "latch" sort of feature and opens to easy.
I did once pay a German, precision engineering firm to modify me an atomizer. Doing the same with the Dumptank, even just improving air- and liquid-flow, would cost a bit much.

Some time a go, I had spotted another atomizer. The big brother of the Aromamizer Plus, as it were - the Aromamizer Titan.
But I had feared they had only made tank and deck bigger, that it wouldn't have the requisite airflow. And it was a bit spendy.

But I've finally caved, spent some time watching reviews on youtube. And found a good deal. And now I have it!
I was so excited about it (the fucking DHL had me run to several franchises, on two different days, because their fucking tracking system isn't worth the piss it was coded in), I didn't even noticed they had shipped me the wrong color, not before I had built and vaped it.
So it's black instead of gunmetal. I will live.

Here is the deck. Those coils are wound with a 6 mm core diameter ('bout 1/4 inch). The mobile Aromamizer for scale.

IMG_20181107_192132.jpg

And here is the Titan in its new home.

IMG_20181107_192511.jpg

It's 42 mm, and it's already fighting the VCMT for the prime-spot in my appreciation - higher flow, AND somewhat better flavor!
I need a bigger Drip Tip (thank goodness the 810 connector is now a common standard - but why the fuck are all the drip tips I can find so fucking short?!). Apart from that, it's making me quite the happy camper right now.

[DerGolgo]

After the Aromamizer Titan had gone to #1 with a bullet among my atomizers, I was made aware that Steam Crave were also offering a matching mod. The Titan PWM.
I had been considering a fifth mode for the "just reach left and grab one" array next to my keyboard, yet no appealing mode had materialized.
My Fat Boy is sitting on a variable-wattage mod, the SMOK GX350, simply because nobody had been offering a four-battery, 300+ W machine, and I do often run it at it beyond 300.
Variable wattage mods, in my experience, are just unnecessarily complicated, and while they may have many neat features, often don't handle quite as nice as a simple, straight-forward VV mod.
Mech mods, meanwhile, be they "real", with nothing more than a battery cradle and crude switch, or hybrids with a mosfets, require more thought to be put into building coils, lacking any adjustability.

However, my beloved Dovpo M VV, would get fairly warm with the Titan atomizer, even far below 300. Even with the heatsinks, I'd be pouring about 130 W through there, in addition to which Li-Ion batteries heat up under heavy discharge.

So when I found I could get a good deal on that Titan PWM mod, I thought "Yeah, that looks kind of okay."

mod.jpg

And it does, doesn't it.
Four batteries, two parallel pairs in series. But a lot of features that other VV mods lack. For one, instead of requiring a screwdriver to adjust power, the knurled firing-button is also the power-knob. It is stepped, both tactile and functionally, allowing adjustment in steps of 0.1 Volt. Which is good enough.
The display, meanwhile, shows the charge of each battery pair, set voltage, detected resistance, and the resulting wattage. I'd prefer amperage to wattage, but that is good enough.
"PWM", btw, is short for "pulse width modulation", which is the simple and straight forward technique by which as many as 8.4 V on a full charge is turned into a lesser voltage. It does it just the way the name implies. The full voltage comes out in discrete pulses, at a fixed frequency. Depending on the width of said pulses, this works out at a lesser effective voltage.
It cannot produce higher voltage, like some VW mods can do with fancy step-up circuits, I don't need more.

It can run as much as 300W, according to the specs, with a max output of 60 Amps. While the box also specifies 45 Amp input ... I think they mean it'll draw no more than 45 Amps from either battery pair.
Critically for the home gamer, it has all the safety features that most advanced-class VV devices lack. It will consider anything below 0.06 Ω a short circuit, which is pretty good (most mods with such protection won't handle less than 0.1 Ω), it will prevent deep-discharge by rejecting battery voltage below 5.6 V. That is very low, though, working out at 2.8 V per parallel pair. All my other mods complain about low voltage at something like ~3.2 V.
Having twice as many batteries to share the discharge current, and all that thermal mass, should make operation even without heatsinks entirely comfotable, while having twice the ampere-hours will obviously interrupt my vaping less often, for battery charges.

The firing button looks a bit cheap, but feels fine. The fit and finish of all other parts is entirely up to snuff. And with all the safety features and convenient display information, it is definitely suitable for people who never used a VV mod before, yet don't have/want the equipment to measure their atomizer resistance and figure out whether it'll be fine for the mod.

If you order from China, you can get one of these for about $50. I paid a little, but not much, more, ordering from Britain.

Caveat: As I learned from reviews. The serial number stenciled on the back of the machine is important. Early production had some difficulties, apparently, and probably shouldn't be operated. There was, apparently, a bit of a recall. Dunno exactly what the issue was, but once they had fixed it, they added the prefix "A" to the serial number. I have that, so I feel safe and fuzzy. Anyone finding themselves with a unit that lacks said prefix should apparently get in touch with Steam Crave directly, and they'll sort it out.

[DerGolgo]

Just some intersection of 'cycles and vaping that I saw today. And that kinda made me realize how out-of-touch I am with ongoing vaping tech and practice.

I mean, I still vape, I still have five mods with atomizers sitting just to the left of my keyboard. Just.

I watched a review video for the Steamcrave Aromamizer Ragnar.

Why was I watching this

Show

I already have two Aromamizers, the Plus for when I go out, and the Titan that I introduced earlier. Scroll up for that.
My old favorite atomizer is showing its age, if anything breaks getting spares will be substantially impossible. I'm mostly happy with the Aromamizer design, hence looking for a replacement here. Disappointed they used the 1.3mm grub screws again, since those will noodle out pretty quickly. But it's in the lead for the replacement job.

Remember when finding big diameter, low-resistance wire was a thing? Before all that woven stuff became available pre-made?
This guy kept it old school. But not with wire.
According to his description, the material he uses here is...
Bicycle spokes.

It kinda looks it. Very find bicycle spokes, I think. But even if he's kidding (doesn't sound like it, and it's not like "bicycle spoke" is common patois for large diameter wiry-things). Just look at it. He isn't "wrapping", he's bloody well bending!

[DerGolgo]

Ooof. Stocking up on the everything.

Beginning this summer, e-juice is taxed. At €0.16/ml. That's 16 cent per milliliter. That's €1.60 for a 10ml bottle of... anything.
Yes, anything. If it is a liquid sold for vaping purposes, that tax is due. And in 2026, it doubles.

That is not just juice with nicotine in. The courts had found long ago that, sans nicotine, the rules for "tobacco products" don't apply, hence dealers could go on selling liter bottles of stuff.
They wrote the new law specifically so that this "loophole" would be closed. So if I buy pure, pharmacy-grade glycerine, as I do about once every 12-18 months in a 10 liter container, I'd have to pay €0.16/ml. That's €1,600 for my 10 liter jug of glycerine.

I just looked it up, I stocked up on glycerine 476 days ago. That's €3.36/day in taxes just for the glycerine. With the PG, I'm at €4.20. So with the Aroma, that's about €4.50/day just in taxes. When I add the cost of the ingredients, I'd probably be around €6/day total.
I could buy two whole bags of properly taxed rolling tobacco, papers, and filters for that kind of money. Or a box of 20 of a lesser grade brand of filter cigarettes.

This is a tax on substances that have many other applications. That will remain on sale in a tax-free form. Like glycerine is what you use to shampoo a dog, since anything with any kind of scent or smell to it would drive doggy nuts. And it's used as a base material in more cosmetic products than in those it ain't. Likewise, many, many applications for propylene-glycol. The aromas that are used came from the food-aroma industry. One brand that was popular for some years had begun making aromas intended to spice up fucking coffee.

But if I was to do that, buy the tax-free stuff, and dare to vape it, I'd be committing a felony. Not even kidding.
I could buy glycerine from the horse-supply store, a bottle of PG from the pharmacy, a food aroma for flavoring. And I can do whatever the fuck I like with this stuff - but if I mix it up and vape it, it's a felony.

It's doubtful that they'll try to enforce it much. But for now, I'm stocking up. Stuff has a long shelf-life, thank goodness. Should be good for two years and a bit.
My DHL guy is gonna hate me, though. More than he does already, mind.