I am once again a happy vaper!!!! Ecstatic to be exact.
Graduation number one:
I have just very successfully rebuilt my first nautilus BVC coil. Wasn't even as difficult as I thought it would be and didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I am now a forever rebuilder! I was a little worried because I didn't have any wire or filler material here, or so I thought. However, as I posted in the wick and coil section I literally tripped over an old hair blow dryer in my bedroom and did some research and discovered that the heating elements in them are nichrome wire.
I tore that sucker apart and uncoiled all the nichrome wire in it and discovered two things. One, there was actually three different gauges of nichrome in this particular hair dryer, all three kind of close in gauge. Second, different strand of gauge came out to about 20 feet or more each, so I ended up with over 60 feet of nichrome free. Below is a pic of the three strands, the strands go from the thickest gauge on the left to the thinnest on the right:
So I had my wire but needed filler. I was gonna use this medical gauze I have here but wasn't sure if it was pure cotton or not as there was nothing on the box that said what it is made of. But then my cute little neighbor knocked on my door and asked to borrow a screw driver. I obliged her and on a hunch, her being female and all, I asked if she used those round cotton pads to remove her makeup. She does and gave me a partial pack of about 50. Wooo Hooo, off the the races....
So I queued up Hawkeye's Aspire BVC Rebuild video on Youtube and got to work. I very carefully took apart the 1.8 ohm head that came with my Nautilus and saw what I believe was the problem with it. See the pic below:
OK, I'm a newb and all.... But that black wick doesn't look right, it looks like it's been burnt. I may be wrong and someone can correct me if so. I only used this once and only got maybe 2 vapes on it before I got the flashing dashes. Plus, while the coil is stretched out here, I did that after disassembling it. I carefully removed the wick from the coil and it was in the two pieces as shown in the epic. They were kind of touching each other inside the wick, but it seems like the wick burnt out and separated or maybe they had broke during manufacturing, or packing, or whatever... At any rate, it does indeed look like a defective coil.
So, I watch Hawkeye's video and build along with him and am very proud to say I believe I rebuilt this coil pretty damn well, you can tell me from the pic:
Is it just me, or is that one sexy looking rebuilt BVC? I used the thinnest gauge nichrome from the pic above and followed Hawkeye's method with the exception of giving my coil three extra wraps. I should have taken a pic of it.... Oh well.
So, with the coil rebuilt I grabbed a beer, put my Nautilus back together with the new rebuild, filled my tank and fired it up. BAZINGA!!!! She fired up at 2.1 ohms!!!! I was aiming for 1.6, but the three extra wraps probably added the extra from what I've read here on amount of ohms to coil wraps and wire gauge. I've now been happily vaping away for the past two and a half hours and the ohms are sticking between 2.0 and 1.9 with the odd jump to 1.7.
I gotta say here too, this is even better than the original Nautilus BVC. Now I understand why people rave about cotton and DIY rebuilds and such. I'm getting a lot more flavor, a much better throat and lung hit, and an awesome natural draw, and I'm not getting that sizzling/gurgling noise I was getting with the stock heads. Which leads me to my second graduation.....
I have broken the Tootle Puffer barrier and am now vaping at 28 watts.
Hey, I don't mind Tootle Puffing, but I do like the bigger hit I get with the higher wattage. Been hitting this thing pretty hard though LOL. I never broke down and went back to the stinkys while my unit was down, and a big part of that was because I actually missed my vaping more than the stinkys.... I think a small part was also because I got so preoccupied with solving the issue with my hardware I didn't have time to think about stinkys.
Again, I want to thank everyone who helped out in my original thread about the problem. I love this place man!!!! I'm now a lifer both here and to vaping. Now I can't wait to get more equipment and also start doing DIY juices.
Graduation number one:
I have just very successfully rebuilt my first nautilus BVC coil. Wasn't even as difficult as I thought it would be and didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I am now a forever rebuilder! I was a little worried because I didn't have any wire or filler material here, or so I thought. However, as I posted in the wick and coil section I literally tripped over an old hair blow dryer in my bedroom and did some research and discovered that the heating elements in them are nichrome wire.
I tore that sucker apart and uncoiled all the nichrome wire in it and discovered two things. One, there was actually three different gauges of nichrome in this particular hair dryer, all three kind of close in gauge. Second, different strand of gauge came out to about 20 feet or more each, so I ended up with over 60 feet of nichrome free. Below is a pic of the three strands, the strands go from the thickest gauge on the left to the thinnest on the right:
So I had my wire but needed filler. I was gonna use this medical gauze I have here but wasn't sure if it was pure cotton or not as there was nothing on the box that said what it is made of. But then my cute little neighbor knocked on my door and asked to borrow a screw driver. I obliged her and on a hunch, her being female and all, I asked if she used those round cotton pads to remove her makeup. She does and gave me a partial pack of about 50. Wooo Hooo, off the the races....
So I queued up Hawkeye's Aspire BVC Rebuild video on Youtube and got to work. I very carefully took apart the 1.8 ohm head that came with my Nautilus and saw what I believe was the problem with it. See the pic below:
OK, I'm a newb and all.... But that black wick doesn't look right, it looks like it's been burnt. I may be wrong and someone can correct me if so. I only used this once and only got maybe 2 vapes on it before I got the flashing dashes. Plus, while the coil is stretched out here, I did that after disassembling it. I carefully removed the wick from the coil and it was in the two pieces as shown in the epic. They were kind of touching each other inside the wick, but it seems like the wick burnt out and separated or maybe they had broke during manufacturing, or packing, or whatever... At any rate, it does indeed look like a defective coil.
So, I watch Hawkeye's video and build along with him and am very proud to say I believe I rebuilt this coil pretty damn well, you can tell me from the pic:
Is it just me, or is that one sexy looking rebuilt BVC? I used the thinnest gauge nichrome from the pic above and followed Hawkeye's method with the exception of giving my coil three extra wraps. I should have taken a pic of it.... Oh well.
So, with the coil rebuilt I grabbed a beer, put my Nautilus back together with the new rebuild, filled my tank and fired it up. BAZINGA!!!! She fired up at 2.1 ohms!!!! I was aiming for 1.6, but the three extra wraps probably added the extra from what I've read here on amount of ohms to coil wraps and wire gauge. I've now been happily vaping away for the past two and a half hours and the ohms are sticking between 2.0 and 1.9 with the odd jump to 1.7.
I gotta say here too, this is even better than the original Nautilus BVC. Now I understand why people rave about cotton and DIY rebuilds and such. I'm getting a lot more flavor, a much better throat and lung hit, and an awesome natural draw, and I'm not getting that sizzling/gurgling noise I was getting with the stock heads. Which leads me to my second graduation.....
I have broken the Tootle Puffer barrier and am now vaping at 28 watts.
Hey, I don't mind Tootle Puffing, but I do like the bigger hit I get with the higher wattage. Been hitting this thing pretty hard though LOL. I never broke down and went back to the stinkys while my unit was down, and a big part of that was because I actually missed my vaping more than the stinkys.... I think a small part was also because I got so preoccupied with solving the issue with my hardware I didn't have time to think about stinkys.Again, I want to thank everyone who helped out in my original thread about the problem. I love this place man!!!! I'm now a lifer both here and to vaping. Now I can't wait to get more equipment and also start doing DIY juices.
