The E-cig Thread

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Juvarisx

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Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.
 

Oldbased

> Than U
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Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.
I was a 3 pack a day smoker until 2015 when I had the PEs and nearly died. Smoked 25 years, although much of that was 1 pack a day until 2007 I jumped to 2 and 2011 3.
I made the mistake early on and vaping in the US was just taking off fullscale by buying shit ecigs like paying $100 for a Blu kit and those disposables for years. It wasn't until I bought a decent mod and a Kanger Subtank that I was able to quit smoking completely. I had tried tons of times over the years but once I had the Kanger I had a craving here and there but never fell off the wagon so to speak except the few rare times I treated myself to a cig only to find it made me feel like shit and smelled disgusting as fuck. Those times, I never made it through the pack.

Many many options out there for mods and tanks and I've had quite a few of both but I personally keep going back to Kanger Toptank. Easy to fill, parts are easy to get such as replacement glass, o rings and every vape shop/online store carries the coils and shit you need for them and the tank and everything is fairly inexpensive. Smok was my next best favorite but it eats juice and everything is more expensive.
I would say get a name brand well tested and used mod. I've paid $100 for mods that broke down in months. I paid $40 for my Cloupor 3 years ago and has been used every day and still works, although it is showing some real age. I should add the first one I bought caught on fire and might have burned down our house had I not been sitting there. I took it back to the store, it was swapped for another new one and been going for 3 years straight. I no longer charge batteries through the mod do to that. I use a Nitecore 4 battery charger since that event.

You can get a great mod/battery/tank and juice going for $100 these days. If you do your own juice, even at *low* amounts like 250ml at a time, you'll still save a TON of money over a vape store.
You don't need a 3 battery with built in tv screen 300 watt mod to start but you don't want to start with the disposable ecigs from Speedway either.

I'd highly suggest starting off with a tobacco flavored juice to make the switch easier as it will help with the craves then once you are cig free a few weeks and actually can taste things and smell the world again, switch to whatever you like. For me it was banana stuff for a year. Now I mostly do mint, fruits, cereals and during holidays a eggnog flavor.

Depending on what you currently smoke and how much will give a solid idea where the nic level you want to start is. You can go pretty damn high on nic but just like cigs, too much can make you sick and the more nic in the juice, the worse the flavors tend to be. You want it to be just high enough to end your cravings and eventually drop it down so you can get better flavoring and shit.
 

Oldbased

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Zapatta

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I have been homebrewing my own juice for a while now only using Nic Salts instead of the cheaper Extracted Nic. I ran out of PG and my shipment is late so I hit up a brick & mortar and bought a couple bottles of the high quality commercial juices I used to buy and ....... YUCK. I never noticed how acrid and ashy the 'tobacco-ie' Extracted Nic is in comparison to Salts. Literally has an 'ashtray taste' and mouth feel to it and really muddles the juice flavor. Also I can dump 2-3 flavorings in mix and make something that tastes 100% better than store juices. Hell the Nic River brand Cran-Grape single flavor is better than 80% of commerical juice.

Make your own juice! Invest in a $30 scale and $100 in ingredients and you are set for 12-18 months.
 

Oldbased

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So I had a credit card get unauthorized charges a few months back that I rarely use for anything but utilities and other what should be secure stuff. I also used it for ecigexpress and amazon. No one could figure out how they got all the info but it was canceled and a new one issued. I made a purchase about 6 weeks ago with the NEW one and had unauthorized charges again last week on a card that had only been used 5 times, including once again ecigexpress. Some digging around shows many people have suffered the same fate, including ones that had virtual credit cards ONLY used at ecigexpress.

They redid their website recently with better checkout functions and features but as it turns out, the reason the previous site was so horrible is that it was compromised. They did the right thing and upgraded security and the site but FAILED to tell anyone why, which was basically they knew people were getting their cards stolen. Add to this my recent order of ejuice is 70vg/30pg and I've been buying it over a year after learning of them here. The latest shipment is as fluid as water, not like a thin oil as before.

Based on all that, I cannot suggest ecigexpress as a place to buy juice anymore and anyone who did order through them needs to scrutinize past statements and keep a eye on future ones with the card you used. Thankfully as far as I am aware, all major cards over fraud and they make it right in the end.
 
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Oldbased

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Wow. If you ever get hung out waiting on juice like I am and have to buy something temp. The new Vuse Alto is the way to go. Uses super magnets to seat in the charger and for the juice pods. Doesn't leak and almost as powerful a hit as my lighter use Kanger on 30 watts. It doesn't make a massive cloud but it isn't no single puff shit stick like the past offerings either. Fits nicely in the pocket too. Marlboro finally came up with something ok. Still expensive though at $20 for the starter( 1 pod ) and $13 for 2 1.8ml pods. I assume each pod is a packish. Says 5% nic but it hits a bit stronger than that. I'm wondering if it is salt juice.
 
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Zapatta

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So I had a credit card get unauthorized charges a few months back that I rarely use for anything but utilities and other what should be secure stuff. I also used it for ecigexpress and amazon. No one could figure out how they got all the info but it was canceled and a new one issued. I made a purchase about 6 weeks ago with the NEW one and had unauthorized charges again last week on a card that had only been used 5 times, including once again ecigexpress. Some digging around shows many people have suffered the same fate, including ones that had virtual credit cards ONLY used at ecigexpress.

They redid their website recently with better checkout functions and features but as it turns out, the reason the previous site was so horrible is that it was compromised. They did the right thing and upgraded security and the site but FAILED to tell anyone why, which was basically they knew people were getting their cards stolen. Add to this my recent order of ejuice is 70vg/30pg and I've been buying it over a year after learning of them here. The latest shipment is as fluid as water, not like a thin oil as before.

Based on all that, I cannot suggest ecigexpress as a place to buy juice anymore and anyone who did order through them needs to scrutinize past statements and keep a eye on future ones with the card you used. Thankfully as far as I am aware, all major cards over fraud and they make it right in the end.


I have bought a bunch of gear from Element Vape over the past couple years, prices are only a smidge higher than a slow boat from China . I got hit 2X in 6 months for fraudulent charges. At the time I thought Ebay / Paypal was the culprit. But I got a letter from EV a couple months back apologizing, saying the folks who set up their e-commerce site had installed a backdoor and were skimming card #s. They must have outsourced to India or some shit.

Nicotine River is the only place I buy Base and Nic from. They are super legit, their QC and data on sourcing etc for their chemicals is very transparent. They are one of the few companies that is actually lawful when IDing and following the Haz Mat rules when shipping their stuff. It's always packaged in heavy duty packing to prevent leaking etc. Their 'house' flavorings are decent and you can single flavor + sweetener mix easily instead of playing Vape Chef.
 

mkopec

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I still get my hardware from China. Just got a pack in the mail few days ago that I ordered like a week ago. Not bad. Just make sure you get gnuine shit (which they have to disclose) and youre all set. On some shit you end up saving $20 or more plus free shipping its no brainer.

As for the juice I still use RTS vapes. Well, its someone else now that bought the business, but still they have all the shit you will ever need to make juice, and then some. They do free shipping when you spend certain $$ and they pack their shit nice too. I have been dealing with them for like 4 yrs now? Their bases are nice, probably supply most other operations since they sell the shit bulk (55 gal drums) if you need it, lol.
 

Cynical

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Didn't even know this thread existed, thanks Zapatta Zapatta

Currently just using some cheap vape kit, one of those Pockex. Irritates me having to buy the 5 pack coils for it, am I to understand you can easily & cheaply make your own coils and wicks using a proper vape? I'd prefer that route, not too stressed as I've saved tons of money just switching to vape vs smoking, so hasn't been a priority.

Wouldn't mind making my own liquid as well, got a bunch on a good sale after xmas, but it's not gonna last forever, and I'm not paying 20$ for a 40ml bottle.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
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Quit a year or so ago with the Juul and still use it. Not the cheapest way to go but easy, convenient, clean, consistent, and compact. It also has a nice throat hit. I had tried previously with all sorts of fancy vapes and batteries and juice but it was all such a hassle. Juul makes it all easy.
 

Zapatta

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Didn't even know this thread existed, thanks Zapatta Zapatta

Currently just using some cheap vape kit, one of those Pockex. Irritates me having to buy the 5 pack coils for it, am I to understand you can easily & cheaply make your own coils and wicks using a proper vape? I'd prefer that route, not too stressed as I've saved tons of money just switching to vape vs smoking, so hasn't been a priority.

Wouldn't mind making my own liquid as well, got a bunch on a good sale after xmas, but it's not gonna last forever, and I'm not paying 20$ for a 40ml bottle.

I am away from a PC atm, but I will answer all your questions and more as soon as I get home in an hr or so.
 

Cynical

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Quit a year or so ago with the Juul and still use it. Not the cheapest way to go but easy, convenient, clean, consistent, and compact. It also has a nice throat hit. I had tried previously with all sorts of fancy vapes and batteries and juice but it was all such a hassle. Juul makes it all easy.
Yeah thats mainly why I got this Pockex one, someone I work with used the same one. I wanted something cheap to start with in case it didn't work out, but I wanted something that actually produced plenty of "smoke" as well. I'd tried with those shitty disposable ones years ago, and that was the main reason I couldn't stand it, I felt like I was puffing flavored air.

I need something more durable and permanent though. I had to throw a bead of superglue on the outside of the tank for this one, as I dropped it and got a crack in the glass. This thing isn't gonna survive a single day at work when I return, company replaces my cellphones & tools, but not this shit.
 

Zapatta

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Yeah thats mainly why I got this Pockex one, someone I work with used the same one. I wanted something cheap to start with in case it didn't work out, but I wanted something that actually produced plenty of "smoke" as well. I'd tried with those shitty disposable ones years ago, and that was the main reason I couldn't stand it, I felt like I was puffing flavored air.

I need something more durable and permanent though. I had to throw a bead of superglue on the outside of the tank for this one, as I dropped it and got a crack in the glass. This thing isn't gonna survive a single day at work when I return, company replaces my cellphones & tools, but not this shit.

I started where you are and i'll save you a lot of trial and error and and tell you where I ended up to find the best easiest experience for the lowest price.

I am grabbing links etc to info bomb you without getting all tech and mathy. Hold on a bit.
 
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Cynical

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I started where you are and i'll save you a lot of trial and error and and tell you where I ended up to find the best easiest experience for the lowest price.

I am grabbing links etc to info bomb you without getting all tech and mathy. Hold on a bit.
No hurry, appreciate it.
 

Zapatta

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C Cynical



I want thru all the tweaker phases of vaping as a hobby and I have gotten to a place where I have figured out my best bang for buck - cheap skate, least hassle, easiest to use / maintain, fool proof easy mode for n00bs set up. You gotta invest up front a little but after you are geared costs pennies to keep rolling. This is not a MTL (mouth to lung) set up like you have now, most folks move out of that style as they convert to vaping for serious. This is kinda of the 'standard' set up, sub ohm style everybody has moved to as the tech got better. Your mileage may vary, but this for me is the best substitute as a life long heavy smoker to as the best facsimile to 'analog' smoking.


Tank $30 - Zeus RTA
Zeus 25mm RTA by Geek Vape | Vape RTAs

Super easy to build, wick and most importantly doesnt leak. Also probably one of the best tanks for flavor. I have 3 of them un-opened salted away in case they stop making them. I will never bother trying another tank. And I have probably tried 25 different ones


You can find 25+ videos of people reviewing and showing you how to install a coil and wick a Zeus.

Coil for that tank - Nichrome 80 Framed Staple coming in at 0.35 - 0.45 Ohms. You can find people on ebay who will hand wind some hipster artisinal ones and charge you an arm and a leg for a half dozen or you can buy a spool pre-wound and wrap em your self. IF you actually buy that GV Zeus PM me a mailing address and I will wrap you a couple 3 and mail em to you. One Coil will last you 6-8 months before one of the itty bitty wires breaks and it fires shitty. Coilology Prebuilt Wire Spools | 10 Feet - Staple, Frame, Fused Clapton. You just clean you coil every time you re wick by pulsing the fire button it without cotton in and then quenching it under running water. 2-3X does the trick, then just make sure the coil is heating evenly from middle out and put in a new cotton, prime it with juice and ready to go.


Box - Any box that runs on 18650 batteries and has a 510 output on the top (industry standard now days), they have to be 'vape' batteries tho (rapid drain capable). You dont need a fancy digital temp control, programmable curves box. A box lasts 7-12 months before it takes a shit and you need a new one. Really the only thing you give a fuck about in a box is that it has electronics with short protection so you dont exploded like people did in the early day and that it can read Ohms and you can adjust watts. I run med hot coils 0.35-0.45 because I get longer batt life in a day. At those Ohms running 34-38W you could even get away with a single battery box $25 but might as well get a dual so you dont have to carry a spare batt around in case. Smoant makes good stuff, Battlestar is good all around and nice form factor and durable.

Smoant Battlestar 200W TC Box Mod | Dual 18650 Platform

4 x 18650 Batteries @$10 ea. 2 in box - 2 charging.

$15 for a universal charger Nitecore UM20 2-Bay Battery Charger | Accessories

then all you need is japanese organic cotton pads for wicks (not chemically treated, unbleached). fancy super vaping cotton is a fine, but a waste of money IMO. Their claims of working better are meh and really you are gonna change cotton every 2-4 days anyhow so fuck it. $5 will give you enough cotton for 18 months. Cut a 1/4 wide strip with the grain peel the outside compressed layers and you are good to go. Ton of youtube tutorials on wicking with japanese cotton.


some scissors and a pair of bird bill tweezers and a set of those little screw drivers for electronics are all the tools you need dont buy those fancy 'coilbuilder sets' waste of money IMO.

I linked to element vape because their pricing is just a hair over mail order from China and they are quick to ship and will take DOA returns. But ton of places to order from. Mail order everything IMO, brick and mortar are about lastest and greatest, bells and whistles. Fuck that noise. Simple and easy is where its at.

Edit - I'l give you my 2 Cents on DIY juice a bit later. Its a hair more in depth.

Edit- My bad linked the Zeus Dual, which I own and is a pain in the ass, dont buy one the original is better. Fixed the link. the OG one is $5 more, that outta tell you something,.
 
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Sabbat

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Any recommendations for one just to aid in quitting smoking? A lot of the newer discussions in this thread seem to be as a hobby.

I first posted in this thread in 2013, at the time I was trying out vaping as a method to eventually quit. I had been a smoker for about 20 years at that point. There was a self-righteous cunt that decided to start posting, spewing all kinds of shit, and I'm loathe to admit that in no small part to the negative stereotyping and FUD this guy was spitting I didn't end up pursuing vaping. The tech at the time was the other major contributing factor, not just the tech itself, but the availability of the tech in my city in Australia. I live in the far north of the country and as a result, it's oddly, much harder to get things. It's a vastly small place than Sydney, and the distance between us and Sydney makes things expensive or just unavailable. The internet solves that to a degree, but again, the distances involved means if it takes 3 weeks for something to get delivered from China, it takes 6 weeks total to get to me. I avoided this thread since then, and maybe I shouldn't have.

About 9 months ago I was at a social event and got talking with a guy that was vaping. I inquired about it and he was pretty reluctant to talk about it. He did however let me know there was now a brick and mortar shop in the area that was selling everything with the exception of the nicotine (which is illegal to sell here) to start vaping. So one afternoon I went down to the store, and asked the owners. "I'm a smoker, I'd like to give vaping a try as an alternate to smoking, and maybe, I can give it up for good." The lady I was talking too gave me that knowing smile and said "yep, we've all been were you are at some point ... here's what I suggest, lets try it out." I spent the next hour at the store, trying a few selected vapes, then some juices. Keep in mind, I'd done my research at this point, I knew what types of vapes were available, the hundreds of flavours, but I wanted to hear directly from someone that was a vaper. After my first pull on the vape she said, "Ah, you're an MTL, so try this one..." I said "That's impossible! I've always pulled the smoke into my mouth before pulling it into my lungs as a smoker. I've read about this Mouth To Lung thing." She said have another pull, so I did and sure as shit, I was vaping like it was a bong, straight to the lungs. I was a little shocked and said "I'm sorry, I must be that pain in the arse customer that's read/seen too much shit, and knows all the things." She laughed a little and said that it was actually a good thing that I'd done my research and didn't enter the shop, buy up a bunch of shit like I knew everything and sat down with her to help explain it all. My confidence in this lady and the business she worked for grew.

She suggested that I start vaping just the nic-free juice to get a feel for it, while I waited the delivery time for the nicotine to get here, which was going to be about 3 days. She said that it would be fine to smoke normal cigs during that time, but not once I'd gotten the nicotine into the juice, and to space it out if I really felt like a cig. Double dosing on the stuff could leave me feeling sick as a dog, and that made a lot of sense.

So I went home with a Prince Stick (i think that's right) it was a single battery tank on top with a coil set up. All pre-built stuff, plug and play. A contact sheet for how to mix nic with flavour and a website in New Zealand they'd had plenty of contact with in the past. Very simple, very easy. Fill the tank with juice, click the button, inhale the vapour. I bought enough nic-fluid to apparently last me for a year, a 200ml bottle at 200/mg. I think, I'd have to go look, I might correct this later. That bottle cost me 37 AUD. The vape and juice I bought cost about 150 AUD. It was costing me 65 AUD for a pack of smokes that lasted 3 days on average (pouch tobacco). It took three days for the nic to get here, which was super fast and I'd vaped 10mls of pure juice over those few days to get use to it.

I made a new batch with nic this time, and I haven't smoked a cigarette since that day. I haven't wanted to, I haven't needed too. I have vaped every day since that day with nic in my juice. I started at 12mg and I'm down so under 3mg and very, very slowly taking it down from that point. I started dropping it very fast at one point and I noticed my mood was unbalanced put the mix up a little bit and the mood swings vanished, so I decided to move it slower at that point and it seems to be working. I could go on for hours about the what/where and why of my original smoking habits, and if someone asks I will at some point.

It only took a few days for my lungs to start clearing, it took a month for me to realise that my lung capacity was now far greater than it use to be. Previously I could only hold my breath for a maximum of 20 seconds. I could now hold my breath much longer, up to 40 seconds if I really push it. I can imagine how much of a difference that would end up when I start really working on the rest of my health, exercising. Six months later mowing the lawn didn't cause me light-headedness, I was unfit as shit, and still am, but I can move now with feeling like shit.

There's been some huge positives that I won't go into in this post (unless someone asks) and a few negative ones like me needing to get some dental work done after my gums started receiving the blood they'd not had in years. I haven't felt this good in years. Holy shit.. that reminds me. Food. Holy fucking shit. I never knew what half the things I've eaten in the past 20 years have even tasted like. If a smoker tells you they can taste or smell things, they aren't lying, but they can't taste or smell like a non-smoker can. It was like a god-damned revelation. It was like having a super-power activated. I use to like hot food, stuff like Vindaloo's. Mainly because it gave "taste" to things that really weren't that exciting. Now? a Vindaloo (a good one, mind you) isn't just a ball of lava, I can actually take the kardamon, fenugreek, cayenne, chilli. Oh god. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason I've put on a little bit of extra weight since I switched, Food was always a thing I had to do, not something I ever enjoyed doing. Now? it's the other thing.

I'm currently still using a pre-built system. The GeekVape Aegis Legend, using Cerberus X-2 Aero Mesh coils. I started with Kilo Coffee Milk as my base juice and haven't stopped using it. It goes really well with real coffee, smells more like a caramel according to my missus. So I'm not much of a vape enthusiast at the moment, but I'm also not a smoker anymore.

TLDR: If you have a vape shop or two in your area, go talk with them after you've read some shit and watched a few videos. If you've got more than one store, visit a few before you throw down some dollarydoos. Talk to these people and be humble. Don't let some shithead on the internet try to talk you out of quitting smoking, by moving to vaping.
 
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Cynical

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Very nice, some solid info to look into. The info on the coils and wick are exactly what I need. Yeah I'd just do it all myself, seems easy enough, no issue with tools here either heh.

I've been using the salt based nicotine from the start, so I'll prob stick with it.
 

Zapatta

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Very nice, some solid info to look into. The info on the coils and wick are exactly what I need. Yeah I'd just do it all myself, seems easy enough, no issue with tools here either heh.

I've been using the salt based nicotine from the start, so I'll prob stick with it.

Kanthal A1 is standard coil metal it works fine BUT it is less durable and if you side by side against Nichrome, Kanthal has a subtle taste of 'pennies'. Stainless wire makes juice flavor more 'crispy' but it fragile and really only for Temperature Control set ups. TC when working correctly is amazing but its a royal pain, not turn key at all and most boxes that claim they do it cant really. You have tweak out and 'hobby it up' to get into TC vaping, I did and I dont anymore.

Coil 'shape' i.e. all the convoluted ways they stack and wrap wires Staple, Clapton, Alien etc etc are kinda overboard and ridiculous in variations. Literally a single plain nichrome wire does a fine enough job. All those funky wrap configurations are about getting as big a surface area as possible atomizing the liquid for 'cloud saturation / density'. IMO Framed Staples are the easiest to clean, last the longest and give the best flavor.

If you are juicing with salts in gear above one ohm you are probably using 30+ mg strength? You run that in a sub-ohm set up like I linked and youll blow your head off, get the cold sweats and probably barf your guts out because the saturation per puff is gonna be 20X stronger. Sub Ohm set ups eat more juice per day, but if you are making your own juice it doesnt matter. 6mg is usually the top horsepower juice you want in a sub-ohm set up.

I will explain DIY juice a bit later.
 

Cynical

Canuckistani Terrorist
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The coils are 0.6ohm, I still have the 45mg stuff, but I have a puff or two and seem to be fine, more than that I feel like I just smoked a fistful of cigs.