Dude, I fuckin' love Lucky Strike cigarettes. They're the shit, and they've been the shit since WW2. Now if they'd get into making an e-Cig, I'd be all over that like a fat bitch on cake.
Why not tuck in your ears, take hold of your lower lip with both hands, pull it up over your head and chew? Because if I go cold turkey, the odds are real good that's what would happen to you. I like to get a little chuckle out of remembering what Bill Hicks said about smoking, in re: second hand smoke: "Good theory... but guess what? If I don't smoke? There's gonna be secondary bullets comin' your way. 'cause I'm that tense."
I use a Riva 510 (1050 mAh battery - the bigger one) with Smok Tech cartomizers and juice from liberty-flights.com. I find I enjoy the fruit flavors the best and have settled on the 14mg concentration as being "right" for me. There's really no downside, to me. It feels just like smoking, the vapor aroma is pleasant for those around me, there's no mess to clean up, the battery lasts easily a full day and I just swap them out in the morning, and the cost savings is absolutely incredible. I smoked 2 packs a day (a carton a week) for about 20 years and went from spending $50 a week to about $30 a month on supplies.
I tend to get between 4-6 hours of use per charge with the Blu. I've also discovered that there's a certain acclimation period to the thing. Now that I've been using it a while, I've gotten used to the slightly different technique involved with vaping vs. smoking. Can't recommend it strongly enough.
I am a heavy smoker and I wanted to switch to e-cigs to give my lungs a rest. But you know what? E-cigarettes with nicotine are illegal in Switzerland! Illegal! WTF? They only sell e-cigs WITHOUT nicotine! How weird is that? This is so stupid.... Thanks, tobbaco mafia! Or the the government agency which is responsible for this nonsense.. FUCK YOU! I am a nicotine addict, I don't give a fuck about the smell! I need my nicotine! Thank God I can buy e-cigs online in Germany with my credit card. As long as the customs service doesn't care... But they do! I once tried to send excellent weed and hash (and some shrooms) from Amsterdam to my adress in Switzerland, and only half of the stuff arrived! God, sometimes I hate our efficient bureaucracy and wish to live in a lesser developped country where this idiots of officials have to care about real problems, instead of harrassing harmless citizens.
I peg both as joint culprits in that. And they do it for the same reason they've banned snus -- because they haven't yet figured out how to line their pockets with these products and because both have the potential to be a path to recovery from nicotine addiction, which robs them of tax cattle.
The vaporizers I've seen described on the net so far look cumbersome and bothersome to use. On the other hand, check THIS out.
My brother and also a friend of mine have kids etc., and decided smokeless is the most discreet method, so they told me about it. Really is remarkable bit of tech, but it's pretty expensive (it was a gift or I probably wouldn't have bought one yet, not having kids or need for discretion when I catch a buzz). For the price though, you think it would give you blowjobs or something. On the bright side, two sources told me the company sends you a new replacement unit if there's any malfunction or dissatisfaction of any kind with the device. You grind up the smokeable to fine powder, and pack it into the little chamber, then the chamber with tube fits into the device, which heats the matter at a temp below combustion (i.e. below 451F). When you've "smoked" it all, what remains is spent matter, not ash. Pretty undetectable when you expel the "vapor." No smell, no smoke, but the effects are pretty much a buzz comparable to smoking herb by burning it. I spelled it wrong, the model I received, as you can see in pic it's "WISPR" (omitted the I). It requires premium lighter fluid (butane). The Bic lighter is shown for scale only. http://www.iolite.com/index.php/default/catalog/category/viewsub/subcat_id/36/parentcat_id/4/ here are a few pics.
So knowing that I'm not the only vaper here, can anybody give me some tips/tricks/advice on dripping my own cartomizers? I like the Blu starter kit I got -- that and I spent $70 on the fucking thing + a pack of carts -- so I'm not looking to switch to another system. But I do want to save a little dough and also experiment with flavors/nicotine levels Blu doesn't offer. I'm specifically looking at Halo e-juices like Captain Jack and Torque 56. So can anyone tell me how one would go about dripping into a used cartomizer?
I'm not sure how yours are made. The cartomizers that I use are refillable with a syringe and a blunt tipped needle. If yours use the polyfil batting, you can buy a roll of polyfil for $5 at WalMart that will last you about 10 lifetimes. Just pull the old batting out with tweezers and cut a new piece out of the roll and pack it in with tweezers and refill it.
What I've seen intimated in various places is that most cartomizers, including Blu's, use a structure that that would work fine with. Supposedly there's a seam between the central end-cap and the rim of the entire cartomizer, you use either a straightened bobby pin or a binder clip or something to pull that center piece out, then you can drip right in there. I had never heard that you needed to pull out and replace the polyfill, though, that's new on me. I would imagine that would be a must on a cart somebody had pulled way too hard on (and thus burnt). Do you know if there's any loss of performance/health risk/bad flavor if one just drips into the existing polyfill, provided one hasn't burnt it by pulling too hard while vaping the original e-juice from the cart?
No problem that I know of. The polyfil will eventually get so much essential oil in it that it will start looking like caramel and doesn't vape well. The carts I used to use were open ended and you could just pull the polyfil out and put new in. What you're describing sounds different.
What's the price on a reasonable e-cig? Are the only ones worth getting 70 plus? Are the cartridges expensive?
It depends on how "into" the vaping thing you are. I'm just starting out, but already I can tell that there's a whole... thing... to dive into. For new/casual users, I'd recommend either Blu or Halo e-cigarettes. The Halo starter kit seems to be a little cheaper; on the other hand, you can actually get the Blu starter kit at a brick-and-mortar store, Walgreen's. I can only relate the costs of Blu e-cigs. I got a starter kit plus a pack of 5 carts (cartomizers) at Walgreen's for a shade over $70. The starter kit itself was $50 or so, plus tax, while a pack of 5 carts is $15 plus tax. And again, Halos look to be a bit less expensive, but those are only available online. Walgreen's also offers Blu disposable e-cigs, so if you want to give it just an inexpensive tryout before you decide to try vaping as a replacement for smoking, pick up a disposable -- those run $8-10 and have about a pack of cigarettes' worth of vaping to them.
I haven't delved at all, only seen stuff about it. I'm just curious about where to get in and how much it costs compared to smoking actual cigarettes.
Well, the initial investment is obviously higher. On the other hand, each cart is (depending on how hard and how often you hit it) equivalent to between 3/4ths of a pack and 1.5 packs of analog cigarettes. So for a 5-pack of Blu carts at $15, you're getting basically a carton of cigarettes' worth of nicotine for $30. That's pretty much unheard-of with traditional cigarettes nowdays. Then there are all the side benefits -- reduced health risk, vape just about anywhere you please, your shit doesn't get all fucked up from tar anymore, no more stink, pretty good laundry list of benefits. (Besides which, in the few places that won't "let" you vape? Provided you do it discreetly, you still can, anyway, because unless they're looking right at you, all the time, it's not like they're gonna smell it on you. Way easier to not get caught vaping than smoking.)
Everything you just mentioned there is why I want to get in (except for the price, because I didn't know the scope.) I might buy one come September at the tobacco shop by my school.
My prediction is that there's going to be a trough in prices before the government figures out how to throw a tax on these things which is similarly punitive to tobacco taxes. During that trough, competition is going to explode while technological advancement of e-cigarettes is going to skyrocket. At its peak, I estimate that an e-cigarette will last damn near a week per charge due to advancements in battery materials, inductive charging, kinetic charging and so on, while the cart contents get more efficient to the point where taking one hit off your e-cig will be the equivalent of smoking a whole cigarette in that one hit, so that just one cart will last you as long as a carton of traditional smokes. The best of times for e-cigs will see the equivalent of a carton of analogs costing about $5, while the device itself gets lighter and more durable. Then the Feds and the states will figure out how to restrict, regulate, tax and punish the living shit out of it. Why would they do that? Because, as has oft been pointed out, they don't give a shit about anybody's health and they never did. It's about two things: money and control. They don't care about your health -- they care about regulating the image. They don't want a nation of this guy: They want a nation of this guy: And they're going to beat the shit out of us all with laws and taxes until that's what they've got.
The old carts I used were a cartridge with polyfil that you inserted into a separate atomizer. What I'm using now is a cartomizer that you refill with liquid using a syringe and blunt needle.
Ah, I see. I was hoping for something a little less complicated. That is to say, a little less "you need stuff other than just tweezers to remove the cap and a bottle of e-juice that has a dropper top."
I looked at the Blu website. Their carts are disposable. I think you'll save a lot of money if you'll hop over to Totally Wicked and buy some of those CE-2 XL clearomizers I linked to. You just keep refilling them and a clearomizer will last about a month or 2 before it starts not heating well.
Thing is, will those work with the Blu battery? Keep in mind, I've already invested a little change in this thing and, for the most part, I like the cartomizers you can get for it. I don't necessarily want to switch up and start relying on stuff that has to be shipped as opposed to carts I can get at the local Walgreen's -- I'd just like the option of refilling them maybe once, maybe twice, for each cart once I've emptied it. I'll still check out the Totally Wicked deal, but the place I mean to get e-juice from, Halo, also has blank carts as well. If their blanks will fit the Blu battery, I'll just do some one-stop shopping if I have to resort to shipped goods anyway. EDIT: Oh, G-d dammit. You villain. Now I've got to get one of those.
If the Blu battery is a 510 battery, yes, those clearomizers will work. TW has a Tornado USB pass-thru battery you might look into. You can charge it and power it off of the USB port on your computer. Unplug it and you can vape for a day or 2 off of the charge.
