Tag Archives: atomiser

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Choices, choices, choices

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

In fact, we’re seeing an unprecedented deluge of mods and atomisers from that part of the world with new models being announced on an almost weekly basis. And this is a problem. Well, to you this might not be a problem. To you problems might be what kind of curry to order tonight, whether to go with wine or beer and the fact that the postman still hasn’t delivered your vapemail.

In life I have three main problems: firstly, now the weather is nice I have the doors of the lounge open while I work. No problem there, you say. Now factor in the neighbours who shout a lot, have screaming children they swear at and possess the worst combined selection of music any person could have inflicted upon them. Odds are that you have or had neighbours like this or, if you are my neighbours, turn the damn tripe down.

My second problem is quite a challenging one – I own fourteen mods. No man or woman can possibly use all fourteen at once, not even in rotation. But the constant updates on websites make it impossible not to buy more. I’m currently waiting for my invoice from Mikro Engineering for my Challenger Mk.II – that’ll make it fifteen. To be honest, this isn’t the real problem it’s what it leads to.

It creates problem number three. It is the one thing that vexes me most about vaping. I’ve got a toolbox; in the top compartments I store my charged batteries and my drip tips. On the wooden rack I built from part of my daughter’s ex-bed sit my range of attys. So the issue is that at any given moment I have to choose one from fourteen mods, one of three different battery sizes, one from fourteen attys, one from thirty drip tips and one from twenty four flavours.

That’s 423,360 possible combinations.

Four hundred and twenty-three thousand three hundred and sixty possible vape combinations! This ridiculous array of options for a man who struggles to decide whether to have a Jal Frezi or a Madras. When standing in the drinks aisle I can never decide between imported or home-brewed beer. This is the first time I’ve ever looked at this as a number, frankly I’m stunned.

But this problem doesn’t sit there, there’s the option of whether to go for Voodoowool, cotton, mesh, A1 Kanthal wire (which diameter?), ribbon (which width?), number of wraps, what resistance I think I might fancy and if to opt for single or dual wicks.

And then there are aesthetic considerations. For example, there is no way you could get away with a blue drip tip on a tarnished brass Kraken sitting proudly on a red aluminium Nemesis tube with a polished stainless switch & stealth cap and a polished brass lock ring. One minute you’re constructing a set-up to vape with, the next you’re looking at something as gaudy as a house covered in Xmas lights

I probably spend more time pondering whether or not the combination goes together than I do wicking and vaping the thing.

Life was so much easier when all I had was a Vamo and a Protank. I need a 21st Century Kepler to plan out a simple law of mod selection; either that, or a 21st Century Brahe to threaten to run me through with a sword if I don’t make my choice in 60 seconds flat.

I haven’t even touched upon the time spent online window-shopping.

 

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Sub-ohm Vaping

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

Batteries

There are many places on the Internet where you can find out about batteries but this counts for nothing if you purchase a clone by mistake.

Brand names like Efest, Panasonic, AW, Sony, MNKE should only be purchased from highly recommended suppliers. Some brands like AW will only sell through authorised resellers and there was a spate of clones on the market recently. In short, do your homework.

There are many good forums like Planet of the Vapes and UK Vapers where people will answer your questions.

A good vendor will be able to provide you with the performance details about the battery. The good news is that there are a growing number of batteries able to cope with a constant current of up to 30amps. With all vaping, ensure that your battery uses “safe chemistry” and follow Rule.1: Never scrimp when buying batteries.

Ohms Law

From when you first started coiling your atomisers you ought to have drummed V=IxR into your mind, where V is the battery voltage, I is the current in amps and R is the resistance in ohms.

To find out what current you are sending through your mod you need to divide the maximum battery voltage (commonly taken as 4.2V) by the total resistance.

When you are measuring the resistance of your atomiser make sure that you use a quality ohmmeter (like this one) capable of reading to two decimal places.

Parallel Coils

If you don’t know how to work out the total resistance when you place coils into parallel (dual/tri/quad) then bookmark this page and it will work out the total resistance for you.

Current from a fresh 4.2V battery

Resistance

Current

0.95 ohm

4.40 amps

0.90 ohm

4.70 amps

0.85 ohm

4.90 amps

0.80 ohm

5.25 amps

0.75 ohm

5.60 amps

0.70 ohm

6.00 amps

0.65 ohm

6.50 amps

0.60 ohm

7.00 amps

0.55 ohm

7.60 amps

0.50 ohm

8.40 amps

0.45 ohm

9.30 amps

0.40 ohm

10.5 amps

0.35 ohm

12.0 amps

0.30 ohm

14.0 amps

0.25 ohm

16.8 amps

0.20 ohm

21.0 amps

0.15 ohm

28.0 amps

0.10 ohm

42.0 amps

Juice

When you are vaping at low ohms you might want to consider using a lower nicotine liquid than you would normally vape. The volume of nicotine entering your body is greatly raised and you can suffer from headaches and nausea. Serious cloud chasers often opt for a zero nicotine high VG liquid.

*Warning*

As a final caveat, in some research carried out by Doctor Igor Burstyn and Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos it has been identified that acrolein and formaldehyde are formed at high temperatures/low ohms/high currents/high voltages. Although there is more research to be completed in this area, to discover at what quantities and how harmful, it is one reason why some people shy away from low sub-ohm vaping.

 

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Imperial High Command Legislation

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

Then there’s the online market research I’ve just completed. It was for the most nauseating toilet paper campaign imaginable. In fact don’t try to imagine it – I sat through it and it made me want to hurl the Mac against the wall. On the angry scale of 1 to Michael Gove it made me reach ‘being forced to watch a soap opera’.

I realise that people who work in advertising aren’t like us normal folks, I realise that they don’t understand us, but nothing had prepared me for that. The horror of something so banal it would make the One Show seem edgy.

Rob’s picture was of the new atomisers, the Clone atomisers. It’s cracking, not least because of the glorious self-deprecating logo emblazoned on the front. Irony is so undervalued. If a product has a unique angle it doesn’t need daft advertising.

And it got me thinking about ecigarette advertising.

We’re forever reading (well those of us stupid enough to click on the links) articles which claim the flavours of liquids are being designed to draw unsuspecting children into nicotine.

Who is this evil genius? Does Billy King sit there with the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, rubbing their hands together and producing a combined evil laugh at the thought of Monkey Jizz? Does Mark VaperCaper make his Cucumber Cooler as some dastardly plot, to take over the world, under the instruction of Pinky & The Brain? Has Baron Greenback conspired with Jim the Kraken to ensnare children with Squid Ink?

Clearly, the answer to all three scenarios is ‘Yes’ but that’s not the point. I’ve not seen one advert for those juices in any magazine aimed at teens. And I get them all. Neither have my kids reported spotting Mrs. Lord hanging around their school gates offering free samples of Marmalade juice. They don’t even like Marmalade.

The thing is I carried out some market research recently and 100% of the one adult I asked replied that they enjoy all four eliquids. The obvious correlation is that these flavours were engineered to hook me in to buying them and therefore need serious legislation putting in place. I need protecting from my personal tastes by an autonomous body, responsible to no one, to protect me from making decisions.

One only needs to point out that I am the person who (after quite a few beers on several Saturday nights) bought the following on eBay: an unseen motorbike, a narrow boat and a copy of Whispering Grass by Windsor Davies and Don Estelle.

Yes, I need protecting from myself.

I need protecting from buying enough drippers emblazoned with a Star Wars symbol to kit out an entire Clone Army.

I’m not alone.

There are the people who are addicted to the New Products page on FastTech. There are the people who visit SHMOvapes so often that their F5 button has a different hue to the rest of the keyboard. And what about the vast numbers of people who physically wet themselves at the news Vapist had stocked The Rose II?

Children make great choices in life. Give my kids an option and they’ll make popcorn and spend their days watching films or playing video games. Children don’t hanker for eliquid, kids don’t get into a frenzy when they run out of House Of Liquid’s Eden – that’s me, I do that.

The very last thing the E.U. needs to be doing is protecting children, what they need to do is help me. They need to help me to stop buying new mods and atomisers. Politicians should realise that it is not normal to have a box containing every diameter of Kanthal and silica and Voodoowool (just in case).

And if politicians can’t go out of their way to recognise the real problem that needs addressing then someone else must.

Somebody must think of the adults!

Help me Obi Wan Toddy, you’re my only hope.

 

 

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Dangers

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

Either by luck or judgement I avoided consuming one of the many liquids stored under the sink as a child, but it’s only time. Friday night is coming and the drinks shelf is empty, creative cocktail thinking is called for when needs must. Quite how I managed to stay alive this long, considering the filtering I did through traffic to get to my last job on my GSX1400, beggars belief.

The papers have a new candidate for a Darwin award every week as they plug their Ego battery into the mains using a charger made from a Blue Peter guidebook (using string, some baking foil and a roll of sticky-backed plastic) and then video themselves impersonating Fantastic 4’s Johnny Storm.

You’d like to think that someone who has a degree would be able to remember to turn the lock button on a mod when setting it down – but I’m typing this very gingerly after leaving the Viggo firing the .4ohm Magma while making a coffee. There’s nothing like grabbing hold of a mod that is approaching the same temperature as the core of the Sun. The body is programmed to automate a drop reflex in such situation. I have discovered that the brain operates an over-ride function when dealing with a valued mod.

Just last night I had sparks flying from the Atmomixani Dome after the positive screw had managed to drill itself through the insulating piece and short to the build deck. Going through my spares kit I had a replacement for everything on the atty except that one item; lucky for me my inability to self-organise stretches to throwing away bits and lo, in my vape kit, I found a suitable replacement.

Apart from the large dose of stupid I consumed for breakfast it would appear I also have magnetic properties. Out in public I attract nutters, my inbox is full of bizarre requests and every single lost piece of Kanthal has now been found. They can located in my left foot which, had that been the plot of the film of the same name, would have made far more enjoyable viewing; I would be played by Rutger Hauer.

Out of all the dangers I face by far the greatest is the temptation to hurl a genny at the wall. Even Bear Grills would crumble if he had to redo a coil and wick four times before it worked. I suspect the earthquake in Britain this week had something to do with a genny-related tantrum.

Of course, as so often the case, when we think of dangers we focus on the physical. Wild bears, zombie apocalypses and zombie wild bears consume most of my daily worries – but it is the mental anguish which vapers will be most familiar with.

For weeks the children are denied access to food other than beans, forced to hang around Tesco waiting for empty boxes to plug the holes in their shoes and listen to my old LPs instead of downloading Now 251. For weeks they endure deprivation just so I can sit and repeatedly refresh my browser because the greatest atomiser known to mankind.

It is the mental torment that afflicts us because it’s a pain no one can see. Well, no one who isn’t looking through our French windows as the product goes out of stock before Firefox kicks back into life.

And what about the poor vapers who eventually give up waiting, break down and buy something different only to see the object of their dreams suddenly appear on a website but the money has been spent? What support mechanisms do we have in place for them? None, that’s how many.

The MRHA can go on all they want about efficacy of products but what I want to know is are they going to ensure that I can buy a Hellfire? Are they flip. I will keep clicking on the site in the knowledge that the day one is for sale I will be reduced to a wreck of my former self.

Once I couldn’t decide which girl to go out with and so I made a list of pluses and minuses. By the time I’d finished the list the girl who’d won had decided she’d rather be going out with a bloke who owned a Lada – a ten-speed bicycle can’t compete when the stakes are that high.

I have a feeling that a similar situation will happen as I weigh up which mods will have to be sold on. But, on thinking about it, I could always just cut off my left foot and take it to a scrap metal merchant. It’s that or putting the wife on a corner and the last time that happened someone traded her for a used sofa.

All of this pales in comparison with the greatest mental danger that can afflict a discerning vaper; the choice of what atomiser to put on which mod.

If you are fortunate enough to live with one mod and one atty then you are in that blissful monogamistic state, you don’t have to suffer the worry that the drip tip contrasts garishly with the top cap and that people will mock you as you vape in public.

I’ve developed a Mormon approach to device ownership and, like the notion of having more than one wife, it isn’t as carefree as you’d imagine. Just imagine having eight women telling you to put the toilet seat down and put your used pants in the wash basket, not on the floor.

Every…single…day. *Shudders*

All the mods, attys and drip tips demand attention. On my last visit to the doctor she asked me what I thought my major problems in life were. She was clearly not a vaper judging by the brevity of the appointment – but at least I now have a clean bill of health. I probably spend as much time deciding on the mod/atty/tip combo that I do actually vaping the thing. Of course that’s actually a bad thing as it cuts down on having to recoil, injur myself and get more Kanthal jabbed into my flesh.

There ought to be a warning about vaping, someone should seriously get on that.

Dave Cross

 

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Options

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

Thing is, and there’s a truism from football, that form is temporary and class is permanent.

I’m not a dedicated follower of fashion and resolutely refuse to accompany my daughter shopping. She’s 13 and apparently clothes are important to 13yr-old girls. I know this because I stood with her for twenty-three minutes and nineteen seconds as she attempted to decide which top to buy. Once, never again, will I spend twenty-three minutes and nineteen seconds before leaving the store and go listen to the radio in the car.

It’s got to that stage at home where my teenagers mock me for my clothes but I’m OK with that, it’s all part of my anti-fashion/anti-brand stance. My teen punk ethos bleeding into my middle age spread. Or so I thought.

As much as I refuse to countenance paying more than a tenner for a shirt or £20 on shoes I keep finding myself pulled out by the rip tide of vaping fashion into deep waters. One minute I was happy paddling with my Kayfun-lite, the next I’m sitting looking at a Dome wondering how on Earth it floated onto my desk. And then it struck me that I am my daughter; I spend far more time flitting from browser tab to browser tab comparing vape gear than she ever does with clothes. I’m not knocking the KFL, far from it. As someone who was using Evods and learning to swim in vaping circles I was given an almighty push in the back to flounder about with it.

The Kayfun, in its present iteration, is still the only silica atty I keep going back to again and again. Yes it dribbles a little bit from the fill hole even though Svoemesto have now put an o-ring there but it doesn’t have the hit or miss quality of the Taifun or the ridiculous size. I got a GT because everyone was going on about how they were better than Kayfuns and, being more sheeplike than the ones that cartoon wolf tried to steal (only to be pounded by the dog), I followed the crowd.

Now it’ll sit here on the desk and be used once in a blue moon either because of its bulk or because the exact same wick and coil set-up will dry hit or leak. More than anything I’ve learnt that going with the pack only leads to frustration.

It’s not an easy thing to do if you are me and have my vast list of bad choices I’ve made. If I just reel off the unaided vehicle-based decisions I’ve made you’ll get the picture:

  • A Vauxhall Victor estate – 2 months, dead in the drive
  • A Polski Fiat – 1 hour, died after one mile
  • A Moto Guzzi – three days, shaft seized
  • A Leyland Princess – one month, died on the A1
  • A second Moto Guzzi – died while doing 80mph in the outside on the M6
  • A Volvo 440 – died during test drive when I was selling it
  • Trust me, it goes on…

So, I was quite proud of myself that I gave the Aqua a wide berth. Especially when I looked at how fussy it was inside at a recent vapemeet. That was a real bullet-dodging moment for me. It ranks up there with the time I avoided being arrested with my mates, for driving around Northampton throwing lit bangers out of the window, on the way back from the pub.

It seemed a great idea at the time. Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This is the person who has lived through two major housing-price crashes and both times they came days after I bought a house. It wouldn’t have been so bad had they been decent houses but I opted for quirky and unique. People don’t buy quirky and unique. I should be kept away from money, decisions and cheap Chinese fireworks.

The second proper mech mod I bought fell into that quirky subset. I loved the design in the way a mother loves her hideously ugly baby. After two large price drops on the vendors website I couldn’t give it away. Well that’s not true because I have just given it away, no one would have bought it.

When it came to mods there was one I resolutely stayed away from, I didn’t buy a thing from Atmomixani because the world and her husband had one, real or clone. For months I resisted until my birthday loomed and the wife wanted to know if there was anything I’d like.

Figuring that I would never pay for a Nemesis I suggested it. What do you know? I made a decent call for once. But then you already know that because you’ve probably got one. I guess when you make the volume of poor choices in life that I do then some of them will come good; it’s like the roomful of monkeys with computers.

I’m doing myself a disservice. For a start I’ve never read a Dan Brown novel, watched Titanic, listened to One Direction or dialled to have a contestant evicted from a televised house/jungle. Not all my choices have been stupid.

The mods and attys I have now may not be anybody else’s cup of tea but what does that matter? The wick in my Pulse-G may look like a monstrosity but it’s my disaster and it vapes brilliantly.

Living in the now and exploring is what makes vaping the journey it is because, like travelling, the wrong turn can often take you to the most interesting of destinations. Just don’t follow my lead.

Dave Cross