Tag Archives: ecigarettes

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A little bit of politics

Posted on by Rob Ellard

 

If you do remember Saturday Night Live then you’ll also remember Harry Enfield’s character screaming out the 80’s slogan “Loadsamoney!”

The stakes are high. The latest figures, from 2012, say that we as a nation spent £15.1billion on tobacco and the current estimate is that vaping will overtake smoking by 2023.

In Wales there are moves to ban vaping from enclosed public spaces and work areas. Consequently, if this interests you, you might wish to watch to the speech given by Kirsty Williams to the Welsh Assembly where she says that there is “no justification” for a ban in Wales. As speeches go, and I try to avoid them if I can, it is a good one. Passionately, logically she explained the logical fallacies to the other members, pointing out that people vape “to help them stop smoking or helping them stay stopped.”

In stark contrast to the goings on across the Atlantic, where a lot of media coverage is being given to the notion of vaping being a gateway into smoking, Kirsty Williams told the assembled that there is “no evidence” that this is the case.

Additionally, if you feel so inclined, Public Health England published independent evidence papers on e-cigarettes, on the 15th May, which will form part of the terms of reference for any impending laws. Worth reading if you are interested or suffer from insomnia.

Finally, if you are new to all of the comings and goings, or have just got lost, the arguments are summed up very well on the Saveecigs blog, in response to some of the points made during the debate in Wales.

 

 

 

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One’s too many, ten’s not enough!

Posted on by Rob Ellard

With the growth of the Internet and the possibility to grab an answer from the ether I keep trying to find out where it originated. And I can’t. Transpose ten for a thousand and you have a logical answer in that it refers to drink…or any vice of your choosing.

It could quite easily be that they used ten in place of a thousand so that the syllables canned the line. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is a truism of vaping.

When I started I bought two CE4s and an Ego-style battery. My first mistake was not factoring in charging time and so I bought a second battery.

I’d not quit smoking, I’d achieved that seven years before, this was all about not taking up smoking again. For various reasons I was as close to a return as you can get – suddenly all of those triggers were clicking.

Whenever I parked the bike up and removed my helmet, whenever I’d finished a meal, whenever I’d got a beer…you know the things, you’ve been there. The notion of smoking was beginning to consume me. I thought getting a pipe might work as a controlled step so I spent around four weeks wandering about puffing on an empty pipe. All it did was increase the craving.

A friend introduced me to eCigs and I began my research. I was going to buy an ePipe but didn’t want to pay the prices being asked. The solution seemed to be a rubber pipe-like attachment to an Ego.

But the grip was now there; the quest for a better vape was on. Internet forums had to be the solution, someone would help me, and someone would suggest a bit of kit that would solve my problems.

So, I joined Planet of the Vapes and asked the question every noob asks. The wife, bless her, was fully supportive of anything that stopped me returning to smoking and as this advice was to be the solution she agreed to stump up and buy a Vamo with a pair of Evods and an Aga-T2.

But, like you all know, it never stops there. Not just ‘there’ but it never seems to stop, period.

From time to time she will look at me slightly oddly as I wave around something I’ve received in the post – that quizzical look you get from a dog when it hasn’t got the faintest idea what you are talking about but may involve food or a good walk.

I’ve got the mod rack trimmed down to ten smashing bits of kit and loudly proclaimed that, while waving around a copper Akuma, that this would be the very last mod I buy as I don’t need any more.

Which puts me in mind of another lyric:

“It seems so simple but they just don’t get it.

I meant what I said at the time that I said it.“

http://youtu.be/usAIvf5gRVQ

And I did mean it.

I meant it as much as any vow taken or any promise made. But…

I’ve just ordered another one, it seems ten wasn’t enough. Giving up fags was easy compared to giving up buying different mods and atomisers.

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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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The Internet Vaping Community

Posted on by Rob Ellard

Warning signs for me is if there is a ‘sticky’ greeting me, telling me not to spam the forum. This aim of such a message is to let you know this group is serious and takes the stuff within even more seriously; that the Internet is serious business.

I can almost guarantee that within three posts of almost all of them I will see at least one reference to a certain large vendor based in Hong Kong. That’s the point I pull the ‘Leave’ button. I’m not making a value judgement here; people do what they want with their money. It has got to the point where not even Let Me Google That For You can raise a smile on my face.

But then you have Facebook groups like Coil. And, given the website you are reading this on, Stealthvape being a home to lovers of wire; I’ll wager you’d find it fascinating too.

Coil causes me a problem. Firstly they have the spam message and secondly they let me join. I have a Groucho Marx philosophy towards places that entertain my presence.

I’ve remained a member simply because whenever I feel I am engaging in something utterly pointless I can go into it and watch people doing things with wire which, to someone like my wife, are devoid of any purpose whatsoever.

The artist in me finds the time spent bending wire into incredible shapes so wholly engaging, entirely beautiful and altogether pointless. It’s glorious.

We all start vaping from roughly the same point and we rapidly understand that there is a better vape to be had out there. Like the people who scour the lives of the rich and famous in Hello magazine, we know there is better than the vape we currently have – something more akin to that draw on a post-coital cigarette.

But FB Coil Porn arrives at that point, drives past it, sticks its arse out of the window while questioning your parentage and telling you that you have stupid hair.

This is the quest for the perfect vape taken to extremes. This is the film ‘Perfect Storm’ starring George Clooney with Mark Wahlberg… only they are in a boat made of Caesium with ten Godzillas and it’s raining knives while being infected with necrotizing fasciitis.

Absolutely bonkers.

The thing is Facebook is more than that for vapers. We feel compelled to take pictures of our mods and attys. We take these pictures and share them with the world. We take them placed in funny places, we record videos of us using them and we display our vaping-related injuries like badges of pride.

Given that half of the pictures I see on a weekend have a vaping device placed next to a can or a beer glass it is no surprise that these injuries keep cropping up.

I like football and am a member of a couple of club forums but nothing like this exists in this sphere. Sure, there are those who will post up from time to time how many grounds they’ve been to – but they don’t come accompanied with pictures of extreme spectating.

  • “Look! Here’s a picture of me watching the match upside down – the whole 90 minutes!”
  • “That’s nothing – here’s a picture of me standing on one leg for the whole game“

And football fans just don’t ask the same questions online either.

  • “Guys, do you know if I can get in to see City play by buying my ticket from HongKongFooty.com?”
  • “Hello, I’m new here, I just wondered what football team you people would recommend I follow? I tried supporting Coventry but found it a bit boring and not exciting enough for me. Ta“

As vapers we seem to be an utter league apart from most normal folks. Online forums are the same, threads dedicated to coil builds and what’s underneath the cap.

In my entire time on football forums I’ve never seen one single thread asking if anybody plays football or watches it while going to the toilet!

Vooping?

Really?!

Anyway, enough of this, I am compelled to show you a picture of my build on my dual-wick Vicious Ant Kraken using 0.3mm Stealthvape Kanthal A1 wire 😀