pitter patter on the keyboard

Only a little over a day has passed since I switched from cigarettes to my new Joye 510 L and I have already made my first modification. It seems that by thinning out the filler in most cartridges and inserting a small straw to allow trapped air at the back to escape you can greatly increase their capacity (rather, how much juice they are able to take without being removed) and the wicking mechanism which results in much creamier puffs.

Credit is due to opusMorian who started this thread: Cart Mod for better refilling and created this diagram:

The weapon of choice seems to be the brown double-barrel (sliced in half) plastic stir sticks of the sort you might expect to find at Tim Horton’s. Unfortunately, it’s too cold out for a Timmies run this late so I cut up some thin drinking straws, sliced them down the middle and rolled them as tightly as I could.

Gripping the roll in a hemostat I applied heat by way of a regular butane lighter waved back and forward about an inch from the tube.

A little gentle massaging and you should end up with a relatively even tube; whether the side seals or not is unimportant as long as the tube is thin and retains its shape. Drop the straw into your empty cartridge reservoir.

Cut right across the top to bring it down to about a millimetre above the cartridge lip, remove the straw then cut it down a further 3 or 4mm.

Put a diagonal cut in each end of the tube going opposite directions on the same side, such that the tube resembles a rhombus when looked at from the side.

The bottom cut allows air to flow through the tube from the back of the reservoir and the top cut keeps as much plastic away from the tip of the atomizer as possible. The cuts must face inward when the straw is situated against a wall of the reservoir. Cut one of the long edges off of the removed filler (or roll your own out of new material with consideration for the reduced volume) and use a pin or similar tool to stuff it back into the reservoir, leaving 1-2mm of fill protruding past the end of the cartridge. Cut off this extra fill then use your finger to push any frayed ends in and evenly spread the remaining fill over the straw.

You should now find the apparent capacity of your cartridge much higher and the hits much more consistent.

In the first part of this series I reviewed the Health E-Cigarette. Unfortunately, it shipped with nicotine-free cartridges so it spent some two months on the shelf before I obtained a vial of 10mg e-juice. In full compliance with Murphy’s Law by this time the atomizer had mysteriously broken. In the mean time I have been smoking cartons of Native cigarettes. When you get your cigarettes in a giant ziplock bag by the 200s it begins to put in perspective the amount of tar one ingests.

I was eventually compelled to cough up the dough to try a new model. Today – after a very long wait – that model arrived:

Or models, I should say. I wised up this time and made sure to get two full units. Meet the 510:

I purchased this model from lightinthebox.com because when shopping hung over I am easily frustrated and moved to make compulsive decisions. The downside to lightinthebox is that their “Super Saver Shipping” adds a 15-day handling period before they even send the damned thing out. In total I was dinged USD$47.48.

Assembled, next to King Size native

The first thing I noticed about this model is how bloody long the battery is. Obviously, it should translate into longer runtime. I have a thing for long cigarettes and cigarette holders so it doesn’t bother me. The second most noteworthy feature is the “steel wool” pad-style atomizer element which is apparently favoured by experienced vapers for its ease of use in “dip” or “drip”ping e-juice directly. While it shares this design with my Health E-Cigarette the 510′s element is recessed almost an inch into the atomizer housing which, upon first inspection, seems to eliminate the possibility of dipping and increase the complexity of dripping.

These rather novel cartridges insert into the atomizer housing and supply e-juice to the element from a permanent compartment stuffed with loose polymer fibres. The design of the compartment and two small air slits suggest that in theory this particular model is very good at keeping unvaporized droplets from getting sucked into the user’s mouth.

Update: The charger is sensitive to touch. Wonderful. It’s sealed shut too, there is no opening it without breaking it.

Alas, I am a rebel.

Very cheap construction all around. You can see that the tip of the charger’s connector is a metal bar with a position tab to keep it from protruding past the internally-insulated nut. The spring doesn’t have much force so my second thought was to lengthen it a bit (the first was to clean the contacts). Still no change. It seems that the moulded cavity that is supposed to hold the nut securely has a little give to it and this is enough to make the connection impermanent.

I hope this won’t be the second e-cig I have to take up with PayPal. :/

Update: The morning after. It is presently 09h30 and my last cigarette was at 17h00 last night. So far I FEEL GREAT! My biggest concern was that the e-cig wouldn’t be man enough for my morning nic-fit; I think it has passed the test. The cartridges don’t seem to hold anywhere near as many puffs as advertised but I was expecting that after my experience with “the blanks”. Maybe they do – but they certainly don’t come out creamy enough after a while. I probably went through six drops of e-juice plus the contents of two cartridges last night alone.

If a cartridge is supposed to be 36 cigarettes is it possible I am over-dosing it a little? I’m banking on the belief that this is just typical marketing crap and 6 or 7 puffs is about half a cig to a cig because it “feels right”.

Both my little vial of e-juice and the cartridges that came with it surprised me in how actually cigarette-like they were. Don’t get me wrong, they taste nothing like cigarettes as we know them but it was a far better simulation than I expected. It doesn’t taste like smoke so much as the really clean, bare tang of a cigarette. It even seems to tickle the nose a the same way. There are hints of the other flavouring agents but I applaud the restraint with which they were added – it doesn’t pretend to be smoke but it delivers the point without being obnoxious. The glycerin will probably always leave a slightly sweet taste no matter what flavour you use but it’s not exactly the worst thing in the world. With my luck I’ll end up on candy canes when I try to get off of e-cigs :\

I’m feeling pretty optimistic about quitting. I figure if I can make it three days I can make it all the way. Paws crossed :3

Update: Almost day 6! I got drunk on night 2 and figured if I didn’t have a cigarette it would stay in my mind and bother me all night. I didn’t even finish half of it before I had to put it out. I’ve been tempted since then but all it takes is three puffs off the e-cig and I’m back to normal. I had no idea quitting could be so easy and I’ve made all of my friends interested. Right now I’m putting together an order for six (that’s right, SIX) eGo T starter kits. Since most 510 and eGo parts are interchangeable I don’t feel particularly bad about settling for the 510 first. If you want an e-cigarette that works and looks like a cigarette the 510 is certainly for you. If you want something that HITS like a real cigarette… well I’m hoping that’s what the eGo will deliver.

I dropped one of my batteries while I was out. Now the button likes to stick unless one only presses the far edge. It doesn’t seem to stay on when it’s stuck like this but it has fire hazard written all over it.

Noticed that all of the cartridges that shipped with my 510s are stale. The juice didn’t go brown so much as it congealed into a very robust translucent white gel very firmly attached to the polyester which does not so much wash off in warm water as it does break apart, leaving the filling looking a lot like a wad of loose Velcro fibres. Unlike Velcro, the globules do not act as hooks and re-matting the filler remains quite difficult.

It didn’t take even 24 hours for me to try my first modification: Fun with Vapour Part Four: Straw Air Pressure Cartridge Modification. This cartridge modification makes using stuffed cartridges daily conceivable but from what I have seen they are no match for the longevity of tanks. I was very interested in pursuing the brass screen modification but don’t feel I can afford to risk breaking my atomizers before their time. The next modification I hope to try is the “Pyramid Teabag Mod” which supposedly provides better capacity and wicking through the use of tea bag material for cartridge filler.

I went to a local flea market on Sunday where I got my first vial of nicotine-containing e-juice many months ago but the vendor I purchased from was no longer there. Nobody had juice (nicotine-free or otherwise), but three vendors had taken up selling cheap nicotine-free e-cigs. Two of them were pushing the Health E-Cigarette which I have already reviewed (crap). One of these vendors ripped my 510 out of my hand and TWISTED the cartridge off (anyone with a 510 knows that’s a great way to break your atomizer) then told me with a straight face that it was a “knockoff.”

I very nearly punched him in the mouth.

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/e-cigarettes_n_853828.html:

RICHMOND, Va. — The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it plans to regulate smokeless electronic cigarettes as tobacco products and won’t try to regulate them under stricter rules for drug-delivery devices.

The federal agency said in a letter to stakeholders Monday that it intends to propose rule changes to treat e-cigarettes the same as traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The news is considered a victory for makers and distributors of the devices, which continue to gain popularity worldwide.

E-cigarettes are plastic and metal devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution in a disposable cartridge, creating vapor that the “smoker” inhales. A tiny light on the tip even glows like a real cigarette.

Users and distributors say e-cigarettes address both the nicotine addiction and the behavioral aspects of smoking – the holding of the cigarette, the puffing, seeing the smoke come out and the hand motion – without the more than 4,000 chemicals found in cigarettes.

First marketed overseas in 2002, e-cigarettes didn’t become easily available in the U.S. until late 2006. Now, the industry has grown from the thousands of users in 2006 to several million worldwide, with tens of thousands new e-smokers every week.

No timeline has been set on the proposed rule changes.

The FDA said e-cigarettes could still be regulated as drugs or drug-delivery devices if they are “marketed for therapeutic purposes,” – for example, as a stop-smoking aid.

Craig Weiss, president of Sottera Inc., the Arizona-based company involved in the lawsuit that led to the FDA’s decision on Monday, said he was “very happy” with the agency’s decision. The company markets NJOY brand e-cigarettes.

Jason Healy, president of e-cigarette maker Blu Cigs, also praised the decision. Once the FDA’s rules covering e-cigarettes are in place, he said, they will help in “weeding out the shady companies.”

Right now, “you can potentially sell snake oil,” Healy said.

Some e-cigarette makers have claimed the products will help smokers quit using traditional cigarettes, while other manufacturers have tried to steer clear of the issue.

Nearly 46 million Americans smoke cigarettes. About 40 percent try to quit each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But unlike nicotine patches or gums, e-smokes have operated in a legal gray area.

The FDA lost a court case last year after trying to treat e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices, rather than tobacco products. A federal appeals court ruled electronic cigarettes should be regulated as tobacco products rather than as drug-delivery devices, which must satisfy more stringent requirements such as expensive clinical trials to prove they’re safe and effective. The FDA had until Monday to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the agency issued warning letters last year to several makers of e-cigarettes and their components, saying the companies’ health claims and manufacturing practices broke the law.

Those companies were not a part of the lawsuit, which was filed in 2009 after the FDA told customs officials to refuse entry of shipments into the U.S.

The FDA has said its tests found that the liquid in some electronic cigarettes contained toxins besides nicotine – which is toxic in large doses – as well as carcinogens that occur naturally in tobacco.

But some public health experts say the level of those carcinogens was comparable to those found in nicotine replacement therapy, because the nicotine in all of the products is extracted from tobacco.

If history is an indicator this may help set the ball rolling for Health Canada. Fingers crossed! On the bright side, we will have the benefit of the FDA’s judgement until then.