Author Archives: Rob Ellard

That’s right – like the rest of the entire globe, we were shocked and traumatised to hear the announcement this week that piggy products could be as dangerous for you as drinking concentrated sulphuric acid or putting Jeremy Hunt in charge of the UK’s health service. Leaving no time for second thoughts, we immediately contacted our production company and rushed through the development of iBacon™, eSausages™ and liquidHam™.

Vapers, with their experience of an electronic substitute to detrimental alternatives are ahead of the field and will welcome this exciting development with open arms. We sent a sample pack to No.10 but, since he left his career in PR, David Cameron is uncomfortable plugging pigs, battery powered or otherwise.

How have we achieved this marvel of the modern age? Firstly, we optimised the neural network of the standard porker using nickel wire and packs of Cotton Bacon, fed them a steady diet of 18350s and rewired the tail to accommodate a fuse. Bam! An instant source of electronic pig meals!

Vapourised bacon has been shown to be at least 95% safer than the smoked variety in tests carried out by researchers from Hamsterdam. “It snort rash claims,” said Doctor Babe. “We’ve been celebrating the publication of the work with bottles of swine.”

Stealthvape is very cognisant of other potential dangers posed by things we love and therefore people might like to ban. We are currently applying the same techniques to develop electronic beer, chicken curry and weekends.

iBacon™, eSausages™ and liquidHam™ will be available on the site soon and we welcome applications from vendors who would like to stick their snouts in and hog supplies.

Someone at Tactical Workz headquarters must have been offended by the delicate curve of a protractor at school. Or maybe they are assaulted late at night while walking home from a bar by a bunch of right-angle triangles. Whatever happened changed them, the world was no longer a beautiful place to live in and they felt the need to express their anger in metal form.

The thing about anger is that it offers a paradox. Little old ladies become adrenaline-fuelled WWE wrestlers if someone hoots at their driving – but at the same time their all-consuming rage robs the withering brain of its ability to process coherent thoughts. Feelings of weakness and self-doubt become externalised as conflict or, in our case, the Tactical Workz Lotus rebuildable dripping atomiser. Some people look at the city of Hull and believe it’s ugly. These people have never seen the Lotus.

This isn’t an attack on any one company…even if they did go on to make the Dreadnaught; a mod so hideous that its best use was as a blinding implement so you never had to gaze on it again. No, this isn’t an attack on any designer; it’s a statement that sometimes engineers should stick to playing with lathes. Good ole’ engineer stuff. When I discover something I’m good at I’ll stick to that instead of writing this drivel.

You see I was always told not to worry about my visually challenging appearance. I was told that there’d be someone out there for me who could appreciate my inner beauty. I was told I couldn’t put people in a re-education camp and I had to wait.

There’s no waiting with mods – the appeal holds firm regardless of how ugly and horrendous they are. The V3 Flip found fans despite being designed in a dark room by mice with felt tips cellotaped to their tails. The Ehuge? Nothing quite says ‘I have no sexual organs’ quite like a device the size of Gandalf’s staff. Or what about The Only Fools And Horses cellphonealike with a Transformer or Thomas the Tank Engine logo on it?

This is all because for every mod there’s a vaper with big cow eyes coveting it. For Ridley Scott fans there’s the Alien-like Deviate, horror film in vape form. Those blessed with a love of cogs, steam and Victorian dysentery there’s every gruesome steam punk ever made. But what about folks who couldn’t join the Territorial Army because they had a splinter? I present the plethora of mods looking like grenades (upsetting airport security everywhere…despite them having all the power of a small child’s party balloon).

And the new rush of ones looking like knuckle-dusters? Apparently there are people who think they’re a good idea too. Whoda thunk it.

“Is it meant to be like this?” It’s the only question going through my mind as I run across the dystopian, post-apocalyptic landscape in Fallout 4. Picking up my seventeenth carrot before having a super-mutant scythe me in two because I only have the weapon equivalent of a cap gun…surely there’s meant to be more to this game?

I’ve clocked up days playing Fallout on the PS4 and everyone I’ve met in the game (even the dog) doesn’t like me. Isn’t the point of computer games meant to be escapism? If I want reality I’ll go to the shop or ride a bus and let everyone take an aversion to me as usual.

That juice I’ve just bought, the one everyone is going on about – you know, that one getting rave reviews in videos? Is it just me or is it meant to taste like something cooked up by Heston Blumenthal? Surely it’s not meant to be like this? Quite how does someone manage to skilfully blend the flavour of sheet metal with a subtle nuance of bleach?

“Is it meant to be like this?” I was sitting trying to fix the positive and negative wires to the Evod head. And then I was poking either too much or too little cotton through the coil. It struck me that vaping wasn’t half as enjoyable as other people would have me believe. I spent weeks bouncing from dry hit to flood – it was like a self-made analogy for post-global warming British weather.

Of course it isn’t meant to be like that. “Get a genesis tank, that’s what you want,” they said. “Get a genisys tank and bathe in the rich flavours hitherto hidden from your palette.” Oh yes, just what a new vaper needs: hotspots. I’m not sure how long it took me to work out how to coil with mesh to avoid hot legs but I’m pretty sure I missed out on a couple of wedding anniversaries.

But then shouldn’t love be strong enough to overcome the lack of a bunch of flowers? Shouldn’t marriage be able to withstand the vagaries of a man obsessed with making little bits of wire coil in such a way that he smiles like he did at the birth of his children? Sure it is; love can overcome all. Love can make you forgive anything, even a lumbering oaf who cares more for pizza than he does for his in-laws. *This paragraph was definitely not inspired by the failure to book a table tonight at El Toro but should my wife read it she may wish to consider the words ‘love forgives all’.

Love can make you forgive the Kraken for the months of suffering because it looks lovely. It doesn’t get up to much these days and I’m thinking it probably never will – much like its owner, it sits here quietly contemplating life. But love isn’t at home for the Succubus (the dripper, not a pet name for my darling wife who would have loved a steak for tea). Love has packed its bag and slammed the door. I’m sitting writing this next to a mountain of used toilet roll. Dribbles and gushes from the low-slung holes have recreated Hurricane Barney’s devastation on my desktop. It’s not supposed to be like this, but then without the set-backs in life how sweet would the good things feel? Who needs steak anyway – there’s always Fallout.

We’ve all travelled this road to a lesser or greater extent. The hunt for something that rewards with a superior vape inexorably leads to purchasing mods and atomisers. And then more mods and atomisers. And then more. We call it ‘collecting’ to justify the unusable quantity of excess. And we change the course of conversation if people begin to question it…

“Oh look at this daft person on television, the wife. Look at them with their ridiculous collection of pristine Star Wars effigies all in the packaging and everything. What on Earth are they thinking?”

Of course, then she looks over at me attempting to fit all of my drip tips into the holes on the self-made mod stand. Not the first self-made mod stand mind, that one ran out of space within a couple of weeks, no, the fifth generation self-made mod stand. But unfortunately the fifth generation self-made mod stand didn’t account for the advent of excellent box mods and only had 24mm holes. She looks over at me with my fifth generation self-made mod stand, that she never saw the point in to begin with, as I attempt to shoehorn it between the box mods and the 26650 tubes. She looks at me and sighs.

My go-to position on regulated devices was formed during the ownership of a V2 Vamo. Regulateds always had wobbly buttons and a stupid gap between the top and the atty. All regulateds were like this because my Vamo was like this. Being able to umbrella concepts is innate to us; if it has claws and pointy teeth then it is probably going to try to eat us. Generalising prevents us being attacked in the High Street by sabre-toothed tigers and the like. And hoarding ensures the cave is always full of mammoth meat. If the wife were reading this as I type she’d be sighing all over again.

Boxes, as for the majority of vapers, have taken over my vaping. I made sure I kept some mechs back from the last clear-out but they see less use than Russell Brand’s comb. And from buying everything I saw, I began to shift to saving for fewer choice bits of kit. And then, akin to a politician once elected, I stopped bothering altogether.

But the little Goblin got me in the mood to see how the budget end of boxes now stacks up – and the Kbox stands testament to my excellent hunter/gatherer skills. I’m staggered at how good cheap vaping gear has become while I was frittering away the children’s inheritance. So good in fact I may have to scrap plans for the sixth generation self-made mod stand and set about on the seventh.

The owner (of what once used to be a thriving coffee shop, before they banned caffeine because it posed serious risks to public order) ushered Old Man Dorn through a cellar trap door. Gary flew into a chair and attempted to affect the pose of a man who enjoyed sitting in a dusty room sipping lukewarm, flavourless liquids.

The Vape Resistance never claimed to be one of the most interesting of underground resistance movements; The Petrolheads had sweet matching jackets, everybody connected to the Loud Sound Squad referred to each other as Lemmys and even The League of Potato Lovers had badges shaped like one of the old McDonalds fries. The VR had one seriously old Kraken clone atomiser that they had to share between all seventeen of them. Hiding out and sharing any scraps that could be pressed into service as a wick they would take turns inhaling vapour that made the old Crab Juice seem exotic.

Life had changed so much since the Cameron Act of 2016. Gone were the freedoms to congregate in groups of more than 2 and the ability to buy alcohol unless it was a £970 bottle of Krug champagne. In fact anything deemed posing a potential risk to the public good was now banned while the inventive and reluctant were forced to find ways to exercise free will under the radar.

The thud of boot meeting door fused with the crash of door hitting wall. The blackened PH paras clutched departmental clipboards in a menacing fashion as they flooded the space. One, the fat one at the back with McKee embroidered on his full left breast, produced the only noticeable sound as he repeatedly clicked his biro.

“What was I thinking?” contemplated Gary as a bead rolled down the arch of his nose. “All those times, all those warnings.” His mind swam with visions of ranting men and angry women chastising him on YouTube for his lack of gumption to protest back in the day. The first time he knew something serious was taking place was after the ECITA and Nicotine Alliance offices had been raided and all the gobby vapers had been placed into internment camps for re-education. “Why didn’t we all stand together?”

For sure, he’d found most of them tediously annoying, but he always reckoned he’d be OK. “They can’t stop me from using my own kit,” he smugly exclaimed at the fresh fish counter in Asda before exhaling a plume the size of Kent. Gary was in denial about many things; he didn’t believe in global warming, held no store in the fears spread by the media and never used the indicators in his long-gone car. He didn’t feel so clever now.

Using the biro as an extension of his digit, McKee prodded the proprietor in the ribs. If a weasel could speak it would have found its soul mate in this man as he demanded to see certifications for the water quality being vended on site. In truth, Old Man Dorn couldn’t have sneezed at a worse time.

Just about managing to squeeze into the passenger seat of the electric riot van, McKee made the call. “I found them, Sir. I found them all – vaping is dead in this country.”

Whether or not to engage with advocacy and opinions about demonstrating raises a number of opinions. We contend that, in its current form, Article 20 will strip vapers of the right to vape in the manner they choose. It replaces informed free choice with a dictate that imposes unrealistic and unworkable proposals. We believe that it will restrict the access to vaping, curb success rates of smokers switching to a healthier alternative and cost jobs of those working across the industry.

We encourage all of our customers and the vaping community at large to find the time to support the pan-European events planned for the 29^th May.

From the Facebook group:

“On Friday May 29th 2015 vapers all over Europe will hit the streets to protest against the TPD2 that will curtail our citizens rights massively. The implementation of the TPD2 will ban all the vaping devices of 2nd and 3rd generation. No more liquids and bases in bottles bigger than 10 ml or stronger than 20 mg/ml. Tanks will be limited to 2 ml and must be filled via an ominous mechanism. Anything that might leak will be prohibited. There will be no more glass or makrolon tanks as they aren’t unbreakable.

We don’t object to easier handling. But we don’t want our choice limited to a single system. Most important for the success of vaping is the plethora of devices and liquids. The TPD2 means the death of vaping in Europe!

With a global protest we want to show how vast our community is. How coordinated and determined we are to fight for our rights. The selected date is chosen to get media attention.”

Rob, Emma and the rest of the Stealthvape team #vaping2015

I wouldn’t mind if the purpose of waking before birds’ chirping time was to get stuff done or go to work. It isn’t; the buzzer goes off, there’s shuffling and mumbling before the object moves downstairs to watch recorded programmes about back gardens. I’m not being euphemistic.

Fighting pillows becomes a losing battle and, in the end, I reach out to stick on the radio and tug on some GVC. I used to hate Grants. That was before I grew to like it…which came shortly before I made the decision that if the opportunity presented itself I’d skip the atty and simply mainline the stuff. I’m not addicted to vaping; I could (as Zammo might have said in Grange Hill) give it up anytime. But not Grants Vanilla Custard. I have a nasty feeling that if I ran low I might indulge in robbery to sustain my fix. Or prostitution. I’m prepared to keep my options open.

But downstairs there’s something important happening in a front garden. Or maybe there’s a new type of accident that no one in Casualty has ever seen before, certainly not at half five in the morning. I’m expecting today, the vendor’s website says so on the tablet. It’s time to wave a white flag and get up, coffee beckons.

Stairs are a wonderful invention. Stairs allow you to go up, and then you can use them to go down.  You can even use them as a makeshift storage unit for all of the things you can be bothered to put in your room because your life as a child is simply too damn busy. At this point stairs help you go down far faster than you could have previously envisaged going at 5:45am.

Nursing a throbbing toe, a coffee and an intense hatred of Alan Titchmarsh – I sulk. I sulk because more bad things have happened in the space of sixty minutes than I’d have hoped would enter the entire day sprawling in front of me. Mainly, I sulk because 6am has only recently featured in my sphere of reference and Alan bloody Titchmarsh is talking about something I couldn’t develop an interest in if my kids’ lives depended on it. But their lives don’t depend on it; they depend on whether or not they leave something on the stairs again.

I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and blot out humanity through the medium of more coffee until almost 7am. It’s at this point in the morning that two little people, who aren’t so little anymore, join us. Two not-so-little people moaning, two dogs barking and a partner panicking they’re now late because time has been frittered.

Satre said: “Hell is other people.” What he didn’t know is that they live in my house while Breakfast TV drones. Dante needs to add my pre-7:45am lounge to one of his levels, somewhere between fornicators and liars.

And then the door clicks and it’s done and it’s over. Heaven. Just me and you, Squapey. Me, you and a bottle of GVC to us through the next threeish hours until Posty rings twice. And Posty is going to ring because the vendor’s website said so on my tablet. Posty will ring and I’ll answer like it’s my birthday because he’ll be carrying a parcel containing a new atomiser. You take your pleasures in life where you can find them and we know the unbridled excitement of receiving an expected envelope with kit in it. Boy do we know that joy.

Time ebbs then Dog#2 barks. Dog#2 barks at everything that might be coming near the house but the thing he loves most is Posty. Loves as in ‘hates with a passion based on no logical motive whatsoever.’ The fury in his woof is my cue: it’s the signal to ride the flotsam and jetsam on the stairs as I try to break land speed records covering the distance to the front door.

And there it is.

No ring, no knock, no vapemail – just a letter. A miserable letter. A miserable excuse for a letter wrapped in the brown paper of doom. I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and resist the urge to kick Dog#2.

Kipling once wrote: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster – and treat those two impostors just the same…” Kipling was probably proud of that. He was probably as proud of it as the self-congratulatory business managers who quote it during training seminars. I’m going to hazard a guess that Kipling never waited for vapemail.

This post is aimed squarely at those out there with an appendage: the vapers who grip their little Red Rods, the 18350 owners amongst us, the folks who resolutely claim that they are happy clutching their small mods. Why? Because vaping advocates are really missing out on dictating an important message to every representative of Homo erectus walking on the face of the planet, every single member.

From one-eyed cave dwellers and butchers slapping their salami on counters to allotment owners pulling their rhubarb – Time Magazine carried a throbbing story, unearthing a rich vein of information. It’s a hammered home by The Guardian and Men’s Health too:

Male vapers have bigger, harder penises than smokers.

The articles rely on information gained by a study carried out by VA Boston Healthcare System in 2011, where they found: “that men who successfully kicked cigarettes had thicker, more rigid erections and reached maximal arousal five times faster than smokers.”

According to the National Male Medical Clinics: “Cigarettes clog the heart’s arteries, including those that fill the penis with blood during erections. The toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke can damage blood vessels that may lead to erectile dysfunction.”

Doctor Lydia Bazzano, Tulane University Health Sciences Centre, is quoted as saying: “There is a fairly strong body of data that link smoking as a major risk factor for erectile dysfunction.” Recent research has demonstrated that the bulk of toxins present in cigarette smoke simply aren’t present in vapour.

Men’s Health reported that researchers at the University of Kentucky discovered: “that when asked to rate their sex lives on a scale of one to 10, men who smoked averaged about a five””a far cry from non-smokers, who rated theirs at nine.”

So, gentlemen, maybe the next time you’re sent out to vape in a smoking shelter you may wish to offer the others there a tug on your big, firm 26650 device.

As you might be aware, we purchased 30,000 metres of top grade Ti wire and the full three kilometres of it is still lurking underneath a pile of jumpers and spare Christmas wrapping paper. Despite providing a cleaner vape to Kanthal we felt it prudent not to sell it due to its combustibility on the mods available at the time.

With the number of temperature controlled devices now out in the marketplace we have seen that the proclivity for titanium to burst into flames has been greatly reduced. Despite this positive result we strongly caution against using titanium as a standard resistance wire – it is unsuitable for dry burning and poses a risk when over-heated.

It is springier to work with than tempered Ni200 but we are pleased to see that the development of temperature-controlled boards appears to have facilitated a way of using this wire in a safer manner. Also, annealed titanium has entered the market and appears to be much easier to work with. Titanium wire also appears to be less prone to oxidation than alternatives due to the low oxygen content of the metal, which may well prove to be a positive in the long run.

We should point out that we are not trying to instil a sense of fear; we see it as our duty as responsible vendors of vaping accessories to act responsibly and keep our customers informed. We welcome exciting advances in vaping technology and are proud to have been part of some of them.

Manufacturers of boards utilising titanium wire assure us that it is safe for use and we’re happy to trust them to bear the responsibility of that statement. Our concern remains that vapers should not be tempted to use titanium wire coils in mods not designed precisely for the purpose of using it.

Update 9 July 2015: Customer demand has been overwhelming for titanium wire to use with dedicated devices so we have sourced what we believe to be the best quality Ti on the market for this purpose. It will go on sale here when in stock.

While we can only speculate upon the motivations behind such an action, we promise that we will still strive to provide the best service and offer support through a number of online points of interaction.

Our physical address and contact number are listed on both the stealthvape.co.uk site and our new rebuildablesupplies.com online store. Our Facebook page (facebook.com/StealthvapeUK) is updated frequently and we guarantee to respond to personal messages. We are active on Planet of the Vapes too, our vendor section can be found here. If you wish to draw our attention to a question or problem please make sure you tag us by using writing @stealthvape in the post.

Within the next couple of weeks we aim to have a RebuildableSupplies.com Twitter account open (and hope that it remains so). We will be using it to advise users of that social networking service of offers and new products as well as any other site updates.