Couldnt I just use the syring lines/numbers and the actual meniscus of the liquid flavoring to measure? For example, if I need .5ml... suck exactly 1ml of liquid into the syringe (i.e., until the liquid level [not the plunger level] reads 1ml) ... and then push out until the liquid line reads exactly .5ml??
Right, you could, but the air would force out the bit in the tip and/or needle, unless you have the control to go from one line to the next without pushing air into the tip. (My bottles are too short and the table top is too far away for this to work for me.) Which has some folks worried about what they are not measuring and the reason for the post.
Or you could use the
bottom of the plunger that is covered in liquid and measure from there. Kinda' like using the meniscus but without pushing out the unmeasured part.
Really, this bit isn't a big deal for most things anyway. It only comes into play when you are already doing small doses. If the recipe works great with 1/50th of a ml of some unicorn tears, then the bit in the tip will throw it off. (And I'm not sure most vapers could tell the difference in 1/50th or 1/25th, but I'm picky and would notice and would rail against the forces that be until my world was righted again.)
Also, how do you guys feel about these cheapie plastic bulb-end pipettes? I have some in 3ml and 1ml. How accurate are they? I did a quick test to determine drops/ml... and I'm getting about 37 drops per ml... yet everyone else claims 20-25. What gives? It seemed like a great way to determine small percentages of a ml. For example, if 1ml = 37 drops, then I can get .13ml with ~5 drops
It's like a standard sized window. There isn't one. People keep thinking such a thing exists, so the 20 drops per ml was born. Drop size varies with the viscosity of the liquid, the temperate of the liquid, the dropper and the droppee. The calculator I use can adjust the drops/ml, and I even have one that the drops/ml for each flavoring can be adjusted independently. I don't use that as my syringes for flavoring are marked every 1/50th of a ml and I don't have a dropper that is that precise. I have a few cheapie bulb pipettes that are amazingly precise in that every flavoring I measured came out to average 31 drops per ml. I mixed for quite awhile measuring flavoring with those and had no issues with repeatability. (I marked the measured average of drops/ml on each pipette with a sharpie as I had some that varied off the 1/31.)
And you could always do it the DaMulta or Darkhood way. Just plop some stuff in until it looks or smells right and go. (DaMulta's Sweet Tart recipe is a winner BTW. There is a thread around here somewhere where I reverse engineered it and assigned %'s and stuff for folks like me who are way too picky to go the DaMulta way.) But DaMulta, and later Darkhood, was right, you don't have to worry about it if you don't want to. Neither of them are concerned with getting the exact same results every time and it works for them. I'm different, but it doesn't make them wrong, just different.
And this was all started by the simple question of, "... does this include the amount of liquid that's in the blunt needle tip too?"
Ah, the simple questions are always the most interesting!
