Yes, i went digging around on youtube last night and discovered the margins for error are VERY VERY small, kinda puts me off a bit if im honest! im not sure First choice homes would be happy if i burned their property to the ground messing with Lithiums!
Im going to acquire the batteries for now, and i may just end up passing them on to interested parties on here. Thanks for the advice and help Andy 
Cheers - Alan
An update. I just pick these things up as I wander about and recover the cells.
Last night was my local club’s surplus/junk sale. I parked and found one where I had parked. Then Andy MM7MOX arrived and handed me two more. Some of the guys at the sale were amazed that these things contain valuable resources!
Currently stock is:
6x 500mAhr 13350
11x 550Ahr 13400 (some of these are physically not perfect and low voltage, 6 above 3.3V)
2x 1500mAhr 20400 ( I really want one more of these)
1x 360mAhr 13300
2x rectangular shaped cells
1x 801640 (8mm x 16mm x 40mm) 500mAhr
1x 902230 (9mm x 22mm x 30mm) 450mAhr
Interestingly the 13300 350mAhr came out of a brand of e-cigarette that used to have a 13400 550mAhr cell. Is there pressure to reduce costs of these and so they fit cells with only 63% of the capacity.
There’s enough to make another pack like the first to fit in an Altoids tin.
I’ve been looking out for these since Andy’s first post. I’ve just found my first one, so building a battery could be a slow process!
This square aluminium tube produced a 500mah cell, which measures 3.45V.
The cell casing is aluminium foil, which I managed to dent slightly while using tweezers to remove the tape that held the wires. This is not a good idea, so I may just discharge it slowly and send it for recycling. I’ll keep looking, though, and be more careful next time:
I finally found my third Elux 3500 Puff e-cig on Tuesday. I only went that route with the dog after some silly tart in the new rabbit-hutch sized houses built on the lovely old field moaned at Mrs. FMF for walking on the grass earlier. I spent some time walking in circles back and forwards hoping she’d have a go at me. Instead I found the third e-cig on the last pass. So worth it even if I didn’t get to explain assorted Scottish law to the tart! That gave me 3x 20400 cells at 1500mAhr. They’re now in a box, quickly wired to test but I’m waiting some BMS from The Middle Kingdom to arrive. Looking good so far. That 3x 20400 pack should run a QCX continuously for 8hrs.
I think that we’ll be finding these things for some time to come even now there is some recycling capability (c.f. Fraser’s comments) so there is no point taking a chance with any cell if you don’t fancy the look of them.
Talking of dodgy… I am mourning the death of an old friend. I bought 2x 4000mAhr LiPos from a Chinese vendor on eBay in 2009. What a revelation they were. Gerald @G4OIG bought the same type. As I was tidying the bench today, I noticed one of these had swelled up massively. It had been used to power 817 #2 for some experiments with DIY SWR meters. But it hadn’t been left on to discharge. It had just shuffled off its mortal coil and gone and joined the choir invisible of its own volition 
Good one at the top, dead on at the bottom. This is only the second Lithium cell I have owned out of over 100 since a phone came with one in 2002 that has swelled. This one and the battery out of a Blackberry.
Oh dear, that’s a blow. One if my remaining three was used to power the 817 on my last activation. It managed to run the rig at 2.5 watt output for over 90 minutes to drive the MX-P50M amp to 25 watts, the power for that being a 4200mAH LiFePO4. It was still sitting at over 12 volts when I recharged it. Now I need to use it…
I’ve still not found any more vapes. Maybe I need to walk into town, not out into the countryside. 
It’s just over 3 months since I first wrote about recovering batteries from one time use e-cigarettes. I still walk the dog and in that time I have found…4 squashed ones which were no use. I thought they must be being recycled as there are just none laying about. Till today when dogging and I came across large one about 200m from my house. This is the type that usually have a 1.5Ahr cell in it. I’ve found 3 in the same place, outside the new houses being built where I used to walk the dog and now there are £650k houses being built. I’m not sure the people buying such houses would throw trash outside their own front door so I’m going to blame one of the many builders/tradesmen that are working on the back of the site where the last houses are going up.
But these things are not as common as they were a few months ago. Probably that’s a good thing™
Banning disposable vapes has been in the news a couple of times recently. It was debated in Parliament. So you’ve managed to get everyone talking about it.
We now have a bin at work just for disposable vapes. So hopefully i can sneak a few away… but probably wont be able to. Since this thread Ive got three but hadnt had a chance to crack them open yet. They are probably dead and of no use by now anyway.
That’s made me feel better knowing they’re not just laying about the country.
I don’t have a dog, but I do deliver stuff to deepest, darkest Lancaster. I’ve found a few intact disposable vapes but i dont see as many as I used to. I think I’ve managed to salvage 3 good cells so far. 3 cells would probably power an MTR for an activation or two.
Thank you for this. I’m in Canada and I haven’t noticed the disposable capes. However, I Wimbledon 18650 batteries from computer battery packs and the like to make power packs for SOTA and other portable radio applications. A 3S1P pack will power my LNR Precision MTR-4B for several activations!
Next project is to make 4 3S1P packs and wire them in series to be an internal power pack for my FT-897D so I can run it at up to 20W while camping.
In your picture of your battery pack I see the balancing wires but don’t see the power in/out line. Was it still to be attached?
Cheers and 73
Bruce, VA7SGY
No, I use the balancing connector to charge the pack and it also connects to the same style socket wired to the BMS board. There is an output wire from the BMS to a barrel connector for the QCX ( or KX2!)
Hi Andy,
It seems disposable vapes are as rare as emu teeth here. However the discarded cells in the bin in the Vape shop have useful life left. Old Li cells don’t normally die, their capacity fades with time and usage.
I recovered three 18650 style with just under 3 Ah capacity nearly 2 months ago. I haven’t worked on the rest of the bagful as I want to do this outdoors and we have had a bit of Winter. This would have l
powered the old 817 nicely but I wanted 4 to couple with a smr to power a variety of rigs at 13.8 V.
Then last week I found the battery in my android tablet was dead and could not be resuscitated. I knew it was sick as it needed frequent recharging It’s one of those flat soft shell ones of course and not easy to find a replacement. Being keen to use the tablet I wired in a twin lead to an external plug and used one of the three rescues.
It worked fine and I completed my task.
Hi Andy
I’ve been collecting these for a while and have hit mainly on 500mAh ones (labelled “Crystal”)
I discarded any that were out of shape, and one or two that were weeping electrolyte
The good ones were checked with a charge/discharge cycle
I figured that a dozen would make a nice replacement 2Ah pack for my FT-817 in 3S4P configuration. I made 3 groups of 4 parallel and then wired the groups in series with balance connector.
Several layers of Kapton tape completed a slightly untidy job - it fits easily in the bay and works very well, with low internal resistance.
Rick
Important to use this and not the usual PVC “insulting” insulating tape. Kapton tape can work at significantly higher temperatures than PVC, it’s thinner and stronger and chemically resistant. If you look inside disposable vapes, they are built to a price and that price is “cheap as possible”. They use Kapton tap for insulating the ends and wires. It’s more expensive than PVC tape and they wouldn’t use if they did HAVE to use it. have a 
from me.
I bought a roll from ebay (20mm*30m) for under £5 and use that on my ex-vape packs.
Update
I discovered that when I transmitted, the voltage was falling alarmingly as reported by the radio, but not when measuring at the battery. It turns out that the thin battery cable - a bit of an 817 weak point - was actually quite badly corroded and was dropping too much voltage.
So I decided to remove the old cable altogether, and wired in a thicker silicone insulated cable soldered direct to the main PCB (actually to the upper side as access to a suitable point was easier). This terminates in a 4-pin JST plug that mates nicely with the battery one.
I also decided to add a 5A resettable polyfuse to the battery assembly to protect against any possible short circuits. The resulting pack weighs only 115g.
Today was its first proper try-out : I activated Garway Hill G/WB-013 for the second time this year. 10 contacts in 15 minutes on 2M FM and a further 24 on HF in 30 minutes, all on 5W resulted in the battery dropping to 11.4V, about 40% SOC. The individual cell groups measure 3.805, 3.790 and 3.804 V, so they have stayed pretty well in balance.
Cheers
Rick
I found my first disposable vape on Friday, an Elfbar 600. I was almost back to my car at Ribblehead after activating Whernside G/NP-004. It was by the footpath that goes under the railway line, between the viaduct and Blea Moor signal box.
Dismantling revealed a 13400 550mAh cell. It’s voltage was only 1.9V so my B6AC charger won’t charge it. It’s gone in battery recycling.
UK Prime Minister announces disposable vapes to be banned in UK.
Not soon enough but a good move anyway.
The right thing to do, IMHO
However I’m prepared to bet they will just go under the counter like the cigarettes in the various Eastern European stores.
Still wombling here at the moment, all picked up off the streets of Hereford
The numbers are astonishing :
500mAh 13350 - 48 usable cells
others, various - 18 usable cells (largest is 23350 @ 1750mAh)
damaged or too low to charge - about a dozen more
I also reworked my FT-817 cell pack with a 3d-printed holder, much nicer than the first effort ! I have made 2 of these, plus a carry case, and have the spare cells to make 2 more if needed !
Cheers
Rick
