Written by Art Cosgrove
One of the most exciting new products to hit the floor at the Portland-based 2017 Indo Expo in August was 710 Oil’s Ready Mix Kit. The kit will very simply allow home users to turn any concentrate — from the most brittle shatter to the powdery and sticky BHO, essential oils and other resins — into a vapable liquid that you can inject right into a cartridge or onto a coil.
The product is a potential game changer. The Michigan-based company’s kit promises to give use to every stray scrap of wax and drop of concentrate that didn’t find it’s way into a bowl, and possibly launch a new wave of craft home-brewing in the vape-cartridge market.
The kit allows users to have the ability to home- customize vape cartridges. In other words, it will theoretically allow many of us to cross over from the casual user to an aficionado without investing $25,000 in some piece of machinery.
Basically any concentrate can be added, and dissolved in the Ready Mix solution. It’s then heated, and injected right into a 510 compatible cartridge. Screw in the battery and start puffing away.
The kit, which wholesales for $25, is elegantly packaged and contains seemingly everything needed in one little box. It comes with a bottle of the Ready Mix solution, which is chiefly propylene glycol (not to be confused with polyethylene glycol, the version thought to be less safe for inhaling), emulsifier and flavoring, as well as a syringe, a steel mixing tool, a tiny glass dish, a battery and an empty cartridge.
At the 710 Oil booth at the expo, staff demonstrated their kits with a little hotplate, right in front of a semi-stunned crowd. Audiences were restricted from sampling, so I got a kit and took it home to hopefully blast off into the brave new world of home cartridge-craft.
Creating the Mix
Creating the solution is as easy as pie, and a pretty forgiving process. Instructions include heating a bit of the Ready Mix (up to a 3ml glycol to 1g or less of concentrate is recommended), then adding your concentrate in — wax, essential oil, etc. Mix it up until it’s evenly distributed, suck it up through the syringe, and inject it into the cartridge. The whole process took about four minutes from start-to-end and was surprisingly clean and easy.
The finished product is just as seamless as mixing the solution. I used a gram of Hush shatter with a deep brown hue, and after mixing, got a nice even liquid with a clean finish.
Here’s a key pro-tip for using the solution; 3ml looks like nothing in the syringe, and it might be tempting to squirt a bit more in to ensure you get a nice clean liquid. I’m not saying I did that or anything… cough, cough… but while it won’t ruin anything, you’ll certainly taste more of the glycol and less of the oil than you want. Trust the instructions. I would even start with only 2ml and work your way up. The key is the hot glycol makes the concentrate warm up and thin; then mixed, it doesn’t re-solidify. So don’t worry about there not being too much liquid in the little glass bowl.
Hitting a Homebrewed Cartridge
After hitting the cartridges, I felt… a little underwhelmed. It just didn’t hit that hard, in the sense that it didn’t come with that tell-tale kick in the chest you get from inhaling something with a high THC content. But here’s where things get sticky for the home-cartridge crafter; the Ready Mix doesn’t have any THC in it, and you have to add anywhere from 100-300 percent of the total liquid volume to create a vapable juice.
So, at minimum, the THC content is going to be cut in half by mixing it with the 710 Ready Mix. This isn’t by any stretch a deal breaker, as the 710 Oil kit is undoubtedly a very cool and fascinating entry in the craft market.This kit might be better suited for those who want a more session-vaping experience that they can tug on all day without finding themselves unable to function.
This dilution is of course is not the fault of the kit, though. Getting monster hits with lots of THC isn’t everything. But, as far as flavoring concentrates — or mixing your liquid with nicotine E-juice for serious vaping activities — this kit is rather groundbreaking.
The ease and convenience of the kit, whose cartridge is an elegant, tall glass and metal rig, is hard not to get at least a little excited about.
When Can I Get Mine?
It’s difficult to say when customers can see the 710 Oil Ready Mix kit in local dispensaries. The Michigan-based company has a great product on its hands with a lot of potential, but lack a wide distribution chain, and a seemingly small web presence, as of yet. But as soon as 710 Oil Ready Mix kits hit shelves, grab one, and see if you’re ready to become a cartridge crafter yourself.
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