Vaping Intro – An Excellent Overview On How E Cigarettes Work
From National Vapers Club Video: How To Vape
Let’s start out with how an e-cigarette works. An electronic cigarette or a e-cigarette or e-cig is they’re sometimes called has three parts. This larger part is called the battery and the battery can be two different types. It can be a proprietary battery where you, it all is involved in one part and you have to plug this battery into, screw it into a wall charger and charge it. Charger comes with a starter kit and you can charge up your battery. The second part is called an atomizer. An atomizer is a small heating element. Inside of here, if we can get a nice close view there, is a little coil; a little bridge, a metal bridge and made out of mesh.
That mesh is called the bridge because it’s a little arch and inside underneath that arch is attached a metal coil. You’re not going to be able to see it with this kind of lighting and matter of fact; until you take the bridge out you really can’t see the coil. But the coil is a metal wire, spun into a little spring and it attaches on either side of that bridge. The other part of the e-cigarette would be called the cartridge. Typically inside of this cartridge there would be some stuffing or some filling.
It looks kind of like cotton but it is not cotton and it is poly fill or polyester fiber which holds e-liquid. The e-liquid soaks into the poly fill like a sponge and when you put this inside of the atomizer it touches the bridge or that metal arch that I showed you which heats up from the battery. When the battery is activated and then it steams the liquid and then turns it into a mist which you inhale and then exhale.
Some e-cigarettes have only two parts, a battery and then what they call, cartomizer. A cartomizer, instead of having a little metal arch, has a wire that runs through the stuffing. It’s all one-piece, it’s enclosed. You can’t show the inside of it or the coil because it’s closed in. A cartomizer looks like this. It has the screws that screw into the battery but the whole thing is one-piece. Inside of here is this poly fill with a wire that winds around it to heat it up and steam the liquid.
The cartomizer unit would screw directly into the battery which it would mean it’ll be only two pieces. The cartomizers, when you use them up, if you don’t want to refill them you can throw them away and just get new ones. It is a little bit more costly to do it that way but the cartomizers can be purchased for anywhere between a dollar and three dollars. So well, a dollar, between a dollar and five dollars per cartomizer. They’ll tell you that the cartomizer will last you an entire pack of cigarettes. This is not true.
The cartomizer will last you about the same amount of puffs as a pack of cigarettes. But when you have an electronic cigarette and you first make the switch you’re going to be using your electronic cigarette a lot more frequently then you were smoking cigarettes. You’re not getting the same amount of nicotine per puff from an e-cigarette as you would from a cigarette. So, you’re going to be using it a lot more and you’re also going to be trying to fight the urge to have a cigarette or if you’re still smoking or maybe you’re not, maybe you’re just using it more frequently because you feel like puffing or you feel like you’re under stress.
When you want to refill a cartridge, you can just take the liquid and most e-liquid bottles have drippers in them or a drip top on the top of it that you can just turn the bottle upside down and squeeze the drippers. This one has a dripper in it so you would just let it drip into the filling which would then soak into the filling and be almost like a brand new cartridge. So you can use e-liquid to refill your cartridges that way. If you want to refill your cartomizer, you need to take off the little white stopper on the top and fill the liquid on the inside. There’s another ring inside that makes it a little bit more difficult to actually refill.
So, there are other methods that the people have come up with in refilling them. If you go to Howtovape.com, there is a tab on the left side that says cartridges, cartomizers. If you click on that, there’s some videos there that will teach you how to refill the e-liquid into the cartomizer without taking it apart. Some people do what is called dripping instead of using a cartridge. If you’re dripping instead of using a cartridge, it means you may have a battery and an atomizer and on top instead of having a cartridge, you would have what they call a drip tip.
A drip tip is just a hollow tube used to put your mouth on when you’re using your e-cigarette. If you do it without the drip tip and you just drip into it and vape using the atomizer. They call that “tail piping.” So you can actually take your atomizer, drip into it and “tail pipe.” The reason you would not want do that is because it gets hot and you don’t want to put a hot atomizer in your mouth. So they do sell these nifty little drip tips now and you put your e-liquid into the drip tip. Often times, when you have a little on the top, you just want to blow because if you don’t do that, the liquid gets clogged up at the top and then come back into your mouth.
Well, it’s not likely to kill you or make you very sick. It does not taste good and it can irritate your stomach. So it’s best to blow and your liquid goes all the way in before you suck on it. This model is one of the most popular models right now, called an Ego. It goes by many names, Ego, Tornado, Riva, and Vortex. There’s so many names, I think probably like 10 or 15 different names for this particular e-cigarette but what it is, it’s a large battery and on the battery you have your atomizer.
Right there. And your atomizer is covered by a cone. Now the atomizer as you see has a drip tip on top but it has a cone that goes over it which kind of streamlines it and makes it a little bit prettier. So, this is the most popular model right now. This model uses a 510 atomizer most of the time. There are a couple of them that use 901 but most of them use a 510 atomizer. This particular atomizer is low-resistance.
Atomizers which people sometimes call attys. I always wondered when people say atty and they type it, they type a t t y but atomizer has only one “t”. Very strange! So the atomizers come in regular low-resistance and high-resistance. High-resistance would be made to use with a higher voltage battery and low-resistance gives you a stronger, hotter throat hit with a regular battery. The thing is with a low-resistance atomizer, you’re supposed to use a battery with a higher mAH because if you don’t it kills the battery life really quickly and you’ll have to buy new batteries very soon.
Some people like to clean their atomizers. So, you can take your atomizer, you can boil it in hot water; you can blow it out from the other ends. Some people like to blow it from the backend to get all of the juice out. That would involve unscrewing it. You should clean the juice off the end of the atomizer and you can take off the drip tip. Put the other end into a paper towel and blow from the end that has the threads on it. This will clean out most of the liquid that’s in there and allow you either put a new flavor in or let it sit to drain overnight.
Some people clean them, some people don’t. Atomizers can be purchased for as little as five dollars or four dollars, if you’re really, really thrifty and careful in buying bulk. So it doesn’t seem like it makes all that much sense to spend an awful lot of time cleaning and fighting with it in trying to keep atomizers going. Most people who smoked, smoked a pack of cigarettes minimum a day; people who are hard core smokers. And a pack of cigarettes very rarely cost us five dollars now days. So really, if you need to replace your atomizer for five dollars, it’s worth spending the five dollars in getting a new atomizer because it’s more satisfying when you have a fresh clean atomizer.
The atomizers can last anywhere from a day to six months. I’ve heard people say they last six months. I’ve never had one last six months. I have one that I’ve had six months and it’s still going but it’s awful. It doesn’t taste very good and it’s kind of “gunked up.” When we say “gunked up,” there are some liquids that will cake up on the coil. Now you can’t see the coil, because it’s underneath that bridge that I showed you. But if the e-liquid, the sugars on it cake up on the coil, you’ll have an awful taste and most people don’t want to continue to use an e-cigarette when it tastes like that.
So replacing the atomizer every few weeks is probably a good idea. I find that a low-resistance atomizer with a 900mAH battery typically lasts anywhere between a week and four weeks; it depends. Some of them lasted five days but I haven’t really gotten many that didn’t last at least a week. So if your atomizers are lasting less than a week then you need to buy them from somewhere else.
Lifespan of your battery. Now there’s two different lifespans of your battery. There’s how long it lasts while you’re using it and there’s how long it lasts; how many months you can use it and still recharge it for, while it still will hold a charge. Now, rechargeable batteries notoriously go dead after a length of time because after recharging them over and over again, they don’t hold a charge anymore. So most batteries, most e-cigarette batteries will last anywhere between three months and a year; some of them a little bit longer. And I say between three months and a year because it really varies on what type of battery and what type of atomizers you’re using on it.
The batteries are not ridiculously expensive. This is a XL Ego battery and they’re between $20 and $30 dollars. You could get one battery between $20 and $30 dollars but again the atomizers are only $5 dollars. Now you need a charger to charge it with so if you’re new to e-cigarettes, you’re going to want to buy a starter kit. A starter kit will include two batteries, an atomizer, sometimes two atomizers, a charger, to charge up your batteries, some little cartridges with some pre-filled liquid in them which is usually disgusting.
A couple of companies have really good starter cartridges but majority of them are not very good. So I recommend that if you’re going to buy your first e-cigarette starter kit, you’re going to want to buy a flavor of juice that you think you might like. Now most people when they’re first trying to pick out an e-liquid, they think to themselves, “Well, I’d really like to get something that tastes like the Camel cigarette.” Camel cigarette burns. It’s lit on fire, it combusts and it burns.
You can’t get that same flavor with an e-cigarette. You can get a tobacco flavor but the tobacco flavor is not going to taste like burning tobacco. It’s going to taste like tobacco tea. That’s the best description that I really could come up with; it doesn’t taste like burning. The batteries on the regular e-cigarettes will come in two forms. They’re can either be automatic or manual. An automatic battery will have no button on it. It will have a pneumatic pressure switch that when you inhale, will activate it.
So when you suck on it, it moves a little flap inside which then activates it. Sometimes it has a little light on the end and it lights up so it looks like a cigarette. This battery is dead so I can’t demonstrate. Well, when you inhale it will light up on the end which lets you know it’s activating. Sometimes you could put your hand in front to see if you’ll see the light reflecting so you know if it’s working and it’s on, it’s heats up the atomizer. Well, sometimes you have to do what they call, primer puffs.
So, you take a couple quick puffs to get the atomizer hot and then you take a nice long puff. This works but most people find that you’ll get a hotter, better, longer hit with a manual battery. Now the automatic battery sometimes have what they call cutoff. Cutoff means that when you’re inhaling, the battery will just automatically shut off thinking that it might be stuck on by accident because it’s been so long. And this cutoff can be anywhere from four seconds to twenty seconds. So if you’re sucking and then it goes off after four seconds and you’re not getting a satisfying hit, the automatic batteries is a little aggravating.
That’s why a lot of people prefer a manual battery. And they do have e-cigarettes this size with a manual battery with a button on it that you can push and that works, too. One of the advantages to a manual battery is that in an automatic battery, there’s a hole in the center of the battery and you can get liquid accidentally into that hole that might leak from your atomizer which would then clog up your little flap that is this on/off switch and make the switch get stuck on either the on or the off position.
This is not convenient. It’s also not convenient for dripping liquid in because you can not drip liquid in and expect it not to run all the way into the battery. So we recommend that you only drip with a battery that is sealed and we say sealed, we mean that inside of the connection where the atomizer screws into the battery. There’s no hole in the center or if there is a hole that is sealed up so that way you can’t get any e-liquid into your battery and it doesn’t get sticky.
You should store your e-liquid in a cool place. You’re going to want to put it in somewhere it’s not too hot. You don’t need to put it in a refrigerator. You probably should not put it in a refrigerator. Someone told me that you get condensation in the inside of the bottle and the water runs back in and messes up the flavor of the e-liquid. So you’re probably best put your e-liquid in somewhere that it’s cool and it’s dark because when you’re exposing nicotine liquid or any nicotine product to sunlight or to oxygen, it degrades the level of nicotine in it and it decreases the amount of nicotine in it.
So you are best off, it also makes the Propylene Glycol or Vegetable Glycerin which is the carrier substance for the nicotine can make it go bad. So it’s best to keep it in a nice cool dry dark place. Some people wonder what strength of e-cig, what strength of e-liquid to get? This is a tough decision and it really does depend on the person. For some people, they cannot completely substitute e-cigarettes for cigarettes unless they go to a very high level. And a high level would be like 36mg per milliliter; we say 3.6%. So it’s 3.6% nicotine by volume and, or 36mg per milliliter.
Thirty-six milligrams would be like an extra high; 24mg is typically considered high; 16mg is average to medium; 11mg is medium to low; anywhere from 11 to 8 would be low and anywhere from 0 to 6 would be ultra low or you know, 0 is no nicotine. So you can actually use your e-cigarette with no nicotine, too. I actually used no nicotine for more than a year.
In regards to e-liquid, there are a number of different types of e-liquid. There’s PG e-liquid, a VG liquid. Someone tried to make PEG e-liquid but PEG did not go over real well, so there’s typically PG and VG liquid. And there’s combinations of both mixed together as well. PG stands for Propylene Glycol. Propylene Glycol is a clear, flavorless, colorless liquid. Sometimes it’s a little bit sweet but it’s a semi-flavorless liquid and it’s used in fog machines that makes the fog you see when you go out to a club or a bar.
It’s also used in children’s Tylenol, it’s the liquid in children’s Tylenol and in baby Orajel which also is a liquid you put into baby’s mouth. It’s also found in toothpaste, in asthma inhalers to carry the steroids; it’s lungs to inhale. It’s just about in everything, hand creams, it’s in shampoos, and it’s in just about everything that we use everyday. So if you look at the back of stuff, you’ll notice that there are a lot of things that contain propylene glycol. Propylene Glycol is the majority of the e-liquid that contains propylene glycol.
There are some people that have sensitivity or allergy to propylene glycol and so they developed the formula using vegetable glycerin. Vegetable glycerin is thicker than propylene glycol and it’s also a little bit sweeter. So it does make the flavors taste a little bit different especially the tobacco flavors because they’re typically not supposed to be really sweeter. So the vegetable glycerin liquid usually tastes better with sweeter flavors like fruit flavors and dessert flavors.
There are a number of symptoms and signs that you may get when you start using any cigarette. Some of them are caused more frequently by PG liquid and some of them are caused more frequently by VG liquid. Some people who have sensitivity or allergy to propylene glycol may have heavier symptoms like hives or asthma, or difficulty breathing and if any of those things occurs, you should stop using any cigarette immediately and you should contact the doctor. Allergy to propylene glycol can be very serious if you have a very severe allergy to it. If you just have sensitivity to it, there are a number of other things that might happen.
You may have things like mouth sores, diarrhea or stomach problems or feeling a little bit dizzy but there are a number of symptoms and you would know fairly quickly. Some people use PG e-liquid for a week or two before they recognize that they’re sensitive or allergic to it and that does happen and in that case you would switch to vegetable glycerin. There are also some things that happen physically when you start using an electronic cigarette. There are short-term side effects for the majority of e-cigarette users.
Things like cold sores or mouth sores, heartburn, muscle aches, gas, urine smelling like very potent or like nicotine, headaches, mucus, mucusy feeling in your throat or in your mouth, chapped lips. None of these things are typically are severe. Most users are not bothered by them. They typically go away within two to four weeks and they typically get much more mild after the first couple of days. The mouth sores occasionally will only last for two or three weeks.
They’re usually not severe and they typically go away quickly. Diarrhea is typically just a symptom of sensitivity to propylene glycol. It’s not common but it does happen. The heartburn is usually accompanied by vegetable glycerin liquid use because some people have difficulty and it creates some acidity for them and gives kind of a heartburn feeling. But that typically goes away once your body adjusts to using it. Muscle aches happen because of propylene glycol. Your body builds lactic acid from propylene glycol and so it’s best if you start to have muscle aches or soreness in your body is to drink more water.
Pretty much everybody who starts using any cigarette starts to drink more fluids, water and Gatorade to hydrate themselves because there are some, you know, some mild dehydration and most people find that drinking more water makes them feel more comfortable. Gas is typically caused by the vegetable glycerin. The urine smell is typically, the strong smelling urine is usually due to high levels of nicotine in your urine because your body does not absorb it as fast as you would think it would and so some of it comes out.
Headaches typically mean that you have too much nicotine in your e-liquid if you’re having headaches and you’re having your heart racing or your pulse racing. It means that your nicotine level is too high. You should stop using your e-cigarette. You may want to consult a doctor if you feel panicked or if you feel it’s really strong. If it’s just really something that you feel a little bit nervous about then you want to cut your nicotine level down and see if that gets rid of your headaches or your discomfort.
Having a mucusy feeling in your mouth typically comes the first few weeks. Some people get a dry feeling in their mouth rather than a mucusy feeling. I think that depends on whether you’re using VG or PG. People who use PG will sometimes get a more dry feeling and people use VG sometimes get a more thick or mucusy feeling in their mouth. Chapped and dry lips can be due to the cartridges or tips on the end of the e-cigarette. Sometimes the ends may be something that your body is not used to having in your mouth.
You should try to keep them clean. Not to let them build up any bacteria. It can build up bacteria and yeast because some of these drip tips are porous. So, they hold bacteria. It’s best to either put them in Listerine to clean or spray them with rubbing alcohol to try and get them clean.
When you first start using an e-cigarette, you’re going to want something small and you’re going to want something that looks like a cigarette. Most people like those white and tan ones because they look like a cigarette and they light up orange and you feel safe using it and that’s great. But within two weeks typically you go, “Oh my God, the battery only lasts for an hour, I want to shoot myself and you need something better.” Now, this e-cigarette is not all that much bigger than this e-cigarette but the battery on this one lasts between 6 and 12 hours instead of 1 to 3 hours.
So being able to leave the house with just this for an entire day or sometimes this and an extra battery just in case; you have to be prepared for just in case. You should always bring an extra battery, an extra atomizer, and an extra bottle of juice. Always have a backup because you can’t go to the corner store and buy them. Well in most areas, you can’t. In some places now you can buy them at 7-Eleven, things like that. But it may not be your strength or your flavor, or you may not like the one that they have.
So, well some people may want, think that they want something that looks like a cigarette. I guarantee you that it will be very fast that you get irritated and aggravated with that and want to put it down and get something a little bit bigger. Now, in addition to things like the Ego, Vego, Vortex, Tornado; whatever you want to call it. They also have what they call modes. Now a mode is a battery holder that you can screw your atomizer onto. So, you take your atomizer or your cartomizer and it screws onto a battery holder.
Now, inside of this goes the battery. This one does not have one in it; its empty. But inside of there you can put a battery. This one is called a BB. They also have every different style, this one is the Super 6 and all of them have just a hole on top to screw your atomizer into and then a space inside to put a battery in. This one has the battery in it. Now, you also have ones that have the battery self contained. This one does not open. It’s got a button. It’s got an on/off switch. You cannot take out the batteries.
So, how do you charge the batteries then? You plug a USB mini plug into the bottom and you plug it into a USB port and you charge up your batteries. This has two 18650 batteries which are very large batteries, one on each side and because they’re contained in there, once it’s charged up this will last 3 to 4 days without charging it. Which is convenient but some people don’t want to go around carrying something like this and using it because they feel silly. Trust me, you won’t care very quickly.
They also have e-cigarettes like this that contain what we call juice feeders. You’ll notice that the juice feeder has a little cap that goes up into a needle. Not sure how well you can see that there. So that needle goes into a cartomizer or cartridge and what happens and it screws on. Typically, you want to use a cartomizer with a juice feeder. Is that your battery then goes on the other side. Now, your juice will come out of the needle and up into the cartomizer which already has stuffing in it; if, you remember what I said and it will fill as you squeeze it. It will fill up the cartomizer with liquid.
Then it has an activation switch right here on the side that you push to turn it on and off and it also has; or to activate it. There’s also an on/off switch on this side. This is called the “wet box,” the messy “wet box.” So this on/off switch will turn on and off and have a master switch so that you can’t accidentally push the button and turn it on while it’s in your purse or in your pocket.
Juice feeder systems are becoming a lot more popular now because they’re fantastic for driving.
For people who typically drip e-liquid and they drip into the top while they’re, you know, when they’re vaping, it’s a lot harder to do that while you’re driving so some people find that they would prefer to have an automatic feed system while they’re driving.
Now, let’s move on to troubleshooting. There are really not too many things that can go wrong when you’re using an e-cigarette. Now, if you have a two-piece e-cigarette that’s just a battery and a cartomizer, there are really only two things that could be wrong. Either your cartomizer is not working and the coil is broken somewhere or your battery is dead and or not working. So, if you try a different battery and it still doesn’t work. Then you try a different cartomizer and if it still doesn’t work then there’s something wrong with both of the ones that you tried. So you interchange batteries or cartomizers until you find one that works.
When you’re using an e-cigarette that has a battery and an atomizer; again, there’s really only two or three things that can go wrong. Either there’s something wrong with the battery or there’s something wrong with the atomizer or you don’t have enough liquid in it. So, number one issue when you go to use your e-cigarette, if you don’t get any vapor; try a new battery. Let’s say you try it and you take a puff and nothing comes out. Push your button and nothing happens. You probably need a new battery.
So you try a new battery and when you put your new battery on and if you try it and the same thing happens and you get no vapor and no heat, then you may need a new atomizer. There’s sometimes issues with the atomizer touching the battery or making proper contact and this can be an issue. If you have that issue, you may need to buy atomizers from the other companies Sometimes they’re made off a little bit or they don’t quite make contact. So you can try different atomizers from a different company.
If you’ve tried two or three atomizers on the same battery and the battery doesn’t work. It’s probably the battery. If you’ve tried two or three batteries with the same atomizer and it doesn’t work, it’s probably the atomizer. So, it’s really not too difficult to troubleshoot what’s going on with an e-cigarette. You just kind of have to mix and match and try until you find what’s wrong.
So what comes next is what to buy? What do you want to buy when you’re about to purchase an e-cigarette? Again, when you first start using an e-cigarette, you’re going to want something that looks like a cigarette but this is not always the best move. If you feel very uncomfortable about using it in public and you really want it to look like a regular cigarette. I recommend buying two, buying a regular cig, you know, e-cigarette and then buying some other battery that you can put your atomizer on that will give you something stronger because these are not always so good.
The ones that look like a cigarette, not always so good. When you use a low-resistance atomizer on a 3.7 volt or standard voltage battery, you’re going to get a much harder hit. Now, you can’t put a low-resistance atomizer on a regular small battery like that because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t, it’s not enough to keep it running and it kills the battery. If you put it on something a little bit bigger, you may not be comfortable. You may feel like it looks silly but really when you put it in your hand. Nobody’s going to see it anyway.
They’re only going to see the vapor coming out of your mouth. So, really it shouldn’t matter what it looks like. Functionality you’re going to find is much more important than attractiveness. One of the first modes made was the protégé V1 from Pure Smoker and the thing was huge. But it gave a hit like nothing else would give and so people carried it around. Matter of fact, I know people that, you know, tied it around their neck, hung it around their neck, carried it with them. You know, used it 24-7, didn’t care, had it in their hand all the time and the thing is really big.
I mean, especially compared to this. I could probably fit this whole thing inside of the protégé. It’s crazy how big it is but people didn’t care. Now, we have much more form-fitting, you know, convenient sized e-cigarettes that are much better than the ones that look like a cigarette. Don’t go to the mall! Don’t spend $200 dollars on a tan and white e-cigarette with five cartridges! It’s ridiculous! It’s not cost efficient and you can get the exact same model for $50 dollars if you do a little bit of searching on the Internet.
If you’re going to buy a regular size e-cigarette that, you know, it’s small and simple and it’s a starter kit and it looks like an e, looks you know maybe not this exact size. But you know, small, looks like a cigarette sized. You should not spend more than $40 or $50 dollars on something like that. That’s a full starter kit, two batteries, an atomizers and cartridges, should not cost you more than $40 or $50 dollars.
If you’re going to buy something like the Ego, Vego, Tornado, Vortex, whatever you want to call it; between $50 and $70 dollars for a starter kit. And these are much more efficient because if you consider that the batteries on these only last about an hour to three hours. That means you’re going to be charging these batteries 3-4 times a day. This battery lasts maybe between 6 and 12 hours typically and if two of them. So if I charge these up, I only charge them one time a day which means they will last me three times as long. You know, month wise or year wise as these batteries which would only last me about 3 to 4 months because I’ve charged them so many times that they don’t work anymore.
So, when you buy your starter kit, you’re going to want to buy a starter kit that has two batteries, preferably, two atomizers but if it has only one atomizer, you can order an extra atomizer. Buying one atomizer is going to be between $7 and $10 dollars; between $6 and $10 dollars typically. But if you buy in bulk and shop around, you can get atomizers for as low as $4 or $5 dollars. When you buy your initial purchase, you don’t want to just purchase cartridges and a starter kit. You want to purchase liquid.
People think, “Oh well, I don’t want to refill. I don’t know how to do it, it’s too messy. It’s too scary.” Believe me, you want to buy it. Now, if you can, many companies have what they call sample packs. Sample packs contain 4 or 5 different liquids of different types and different flavors and sometimes they have choices; tobacco samples, few fruit samples, dessert samples. You know all different sorts of flavors. So, if there’s a flavor that you think you might like, I would recommend that you purchase at least one or two non tobacco flavors.
The reason for this is because as you become less addicted to tobacco cigarettes and you really want to vape instead of smoke. You’re going to find that your taste buds change and you can actually taste things again and once you can taste again, tobacco doesn’t taste so good all the time. Now, that’s not a true for everybody. I would say 50% of the people who use e-liquid or e-cigarettes use tobacco flavor. Maybe not half, maybe 40%, but majority are using flavors other than tobacco. And, the reason for this, because again tobacco, it’s not going to taste like burning tobacco.
It’s not going to taste like a cigarette. It’s going to taste like a tobacco leaf or tobacco tea. And really, once you can taste tobacco, it’s not a pleasant taste for most people. So, tasting things like Caramel Apple or Strawberry Cheescake; or, you know, Coffee or Cappuccino is usually more pleasant for somebody than tasting something that tastes like a tobacco leaf. Another important thing to remember about e-cigarettes is that when you puff on an e-cigarette, you don’t want to just take a puff and blow and blow it out. That’s not going to do anything. You’ll get some vapor but you’re not going to actually feel anything.
When you use an e-cigarette, you want to take a longer, slower puff. When I give it to people to let them try it, I typically tell them to try and take a four or five second puff before they exhale and maybe hold it for a second because your body will absorb the nicotine better if you hold it for a few more seconds. So, you’ll get a lot more vapor if you can hold it for that few extra seconds. You can also feel it more in your chest and in your throat and they have what they call “throat hit” which means you can feel the tingle in your throat.
Now when you first switch from a cigarette to an e-cigarette, if you start using e-cigarettes all the time and you stop smoking tobacco. You’re not going to feel as much in your throat because it’s not burning so it is not as hot and part of that burning as it goes down your throat with a cigarette is the chemicals and the tar and the crap that’s in it; and, you don’t have that with an e-cigarette. So you’re not going to feel as much which some people find that they like to use higher voltage devices.
When you purchase large modes like this and like this, they can be in higher voltages like 5 volt or 6 volt. Typically and there are actually now variable devices where you can dial the voltage up or down to make it hotter or less hot. And as you make it hotter, you’ll feel more in your throat. So you can actually get high voltage devices if you feel that your throat is not getting the throat hit that you’d like have from the e-cigarette.
You’ll also find that the “chest hit” is missing sometimes. So you inhale it and you feel it a little bit in your throat but you don’t feel it filling up your chest as much as you did when you smoked cigarettes. That’s because you’re not getting all the tar and the heaviness, and the chemicals. Some people use menthol to try and get that “chest hit” and feel it a little bit more because menthol crystals will give you a little bit stronger of a feeling. It gives you like a little bit of a tingling and that sometimes replaces the feeling that you’re missing from cigarettes.
There are other choices. There are other options. There are other ways to get throat hit. You can use higher milligram liquid which will produce a stronger throat and chest hit. You can use menthol crystals as I said. There are also certain formulas and certain types of e-liquid and certain companies sell e-cigarette liquid that has more throat hit or less throat hit, depending on the companies. As you try different liquids and different companies, you’ll find that some have certain qualities that others don’t.
As far as accessories go, there is a small case called a PCC. If you look up PCC, an e-cigarette; if you Google, you may see a whole bunch of them or you can type it into YouTube or you can go to VapeTube.com. VapeTube has all videos on e-cigarettes and vaping. You can get a case that looks like a cigarette pack and you can take your battery and you can screw your battery into this cigarette pack and close it, and it will charge your e-cigarette battery while you’re out and about.
Typically, it will charge it 3 to 4 times and that’s usually enough to get a person through a day, if they have two batteries. So they can use one while they charge the other. You can also charge the PCCs by plugging them into a USB port. So if you worked near a computer which most people do, you can plug it into a USB and charge it while it’s charging your battery. They run between $15 and $35 dollar, well, between $15 and $45 dollars depending where you purchase them, and they’re typically pretty convenient to carry around.
So if you do have to have a cigarette, an e-cigarette that looks like a cigarette or small like this, then you’re going to want to get a PCC so that you can charge up your batteries on the go. It’s really awful to be stuck on a subway and you know that you have two more trains to take before you get home or you’re stuck in your car in traffic on the way home and you don’t have any charged batteries, and all you want to do is stop and buy a pack of cigarettes. So sometimes better to carry a PCC and not worry.
Another e-cigarette accessory is called the USB passthrough. A USB passthrough is typically, it looks like an e-cigarette battery and it has a wire that comes out of the end and on the end of that wire is a plug that goes into a USB port. If you plug that plug into the USB port and you put an atomizer on that USB passthrough and puff, it will activate the atomizer through the power coming out of the USB port; so coming out of your computer.
Or you could plug your USB port into your, into the wall or you can plug it into a power pack if you have a power pack like it charges up iPods or phones. Anything that will power your USB can power your USB passthrough and help run your e-cigarette without any battery. So that’s also convenient for when you’re sitting at a desk or sitting at a computer and you don’t have any way to activate your e-cigarette and you don’t want to charge batteries the whole day.
When you prepare to go out for a day, you typically want to bring enough batteries to last you for twice as long as you think you’re going to be out because you never know and it’s always better to be safe than sorry. You can’t go out and pick up an Ego battery at the local supermarket so you want to have, make sure you have twice as many as you need with you, if that’s at all possible or financially affordable.
You always want to bring two atomizers because even if the one that you’re using is brand new, there are times when quality control fails you and your atomizer will just go dead in a day or sometimes in an hour. So, it’s always better to have two atomizers with you. Most people will bring three because if you have a backup and if your initial one dies and you put your backup on, and it’s a dud. Dud meaning that you put it on and it just doesn’t work or it’s not making contact; or, it’s not working properly or it pops and it dies. You’re going to want have a third one with you.
So, it’s always best to have three times as many atomizers as you need because you know; you never know when one might die. Liquid, you can carry a little bottle of liquid with you. Typically, they come in these tiny little 3ml bottles people will carry around to use to drip and they’re smaller and they’re more convenient but they’re also easy to loose. So, you always want to have a backup bottle of liquid because you can’t stop at 7-Eleven and buy a bottle of liquid. You can keep an extra bottle of liquid in your purse, in your pocket, in your car. You shouldn’t leave it in your car overnight because heat and cold is no good for your e-liquid.
But it’s always best to keep an extra bottle somewhere so that you have a backup one in case you drop yours and it goes down the sewer or it gets run over by a car or you leave it in a restaurant which you should be very cautious not to do because you don’t want to leave bottles of nicotine lying around where children could pick them up. In essence what we’re saying is be prepared. Be prepared for the worst. Make sure you have enough for what you need.
Make sure that you have extras of everything and always be ready because if you’ve stopped smoking cigarettes, you’re not going to want to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes when you’ve been vaping for that long. Cigarettes do not taste good after you’ve stopped smoking them for a month. Don’t’ know, especially when you’re vaping, I don’t know why that is but people who quit smoking, try a cigarette after a month and then they want to smoke again. People, who start vaping, try a cigarette after a month and it tastes disgusting. Don’t know why that happens; don’t know how it happens but e-cigarettes taste much, much better.
So, I hope that information was helpful. There’s a website called HowToVape.com; HowToVape.com. If you go to that website, there are all of the basics and simplest formed information. Basically, like a Vaping 101, similar to this and you can get all that information written on different pages. It also has a glossary of terms; what all the different parts of the e-cigarette are called, what typical terms are that are used in the e-cigarette community, what people call different things, how people refer to things.
So, there’s a lot of information there. It’s also linked off of our website at VapersClub.com. That’s VapersClub.com. National Vapers Club goes around to different states where they’re trying to ban e-cigarettes and we teach the legislators and politicians and the lawmakers. And we teach them about e-cigarettes and what’s in them and what’s in the ingredients, what’s in the e-liquid. We’re also working right now on a project called IVAQS Project; IVAQS.com.
The IVAQS Project is a project to do research on the effects of nicotine and vapor to bystanders of e-cigarette users and we’re going to test it to find out what is in the second-hand vapor which is the same thing as in the first-hand vapor. But the politicians would like proof so we’re going to make sure we give them proof and we hope that as a new vaper that you feel strongly enough to want to contribute to this project and to help us make a difference. And, if you’re ever in a situation where you need an atomizer or you need a battery, or you need some liquid and you’re out of something, or you’ve forgotten your charger at home.
Or, you’re out for the night and you’ve realized that you’ve killed your atomizer and you don’t have an extra. We have a mailing list, we also have a hotline. If you go to VapersClub.com and you sign up for our mailing list. If you’re ever in a situation or in a jam where you need something, you can contact us and ask us for help. We have all of our members separated by state in they live in so that if you’re stuck in a situation, you need to go borrow something from someone, we contact our members and we typically get a response within one to five hours from somebody who’s willing to help.
Vapers very much want to help other vapers and want to teach smokers about e-cigarettes. So, and feel very passionately and strongly about it. And by joining National Vapers Club, it allows you to help others. It also allows us to contact you when there’s a ban in your area when they’re trying to stop people from buying or selling e-cigarettes so that you could write letters to the legislators and the senators in your area. We provide you with their name and email address and their information so that you can contact them and tell them that you’d really like them not to ban this product and tell them how it saved your life.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. I hope that you learned a lot and if you have any questions; again, we have an email and a hotline number at VapersClub.com and you can contact us anytime if you need help or if you have any questions. Take care.
At The Best Electronic Cigarette we strongly endorse The National Vaper’s Club and groups like them – I encourage you to look into ways you can help keep the electronic cigarette from being banned or from heavy restrictions that are the goal of several powerful biased interest groups.
