How to clean steel mesh wicks?

[snottyragsdale]

Hi, I've been using a mini did clone for almost a month now, with 400 steel mesh and 32 gauge kanthal. I get a week to a week and a half out of my wicks before they don't want to wick and I get a nasty burnt taste unless I tip it upside down before each puff. The juice I'm using is 70/30 pg/vg. To try and clean the wicks I've been running under 180 degree F water and brushing with a baby tooth brush...then dry burning the water off. This sometimes helps for a little while, but doesn't work more than once. Is there a better way to make wicks last longer, and if not, is this the average life of a ss wick?

 

[CountSmackula]

I've got wicks that are over 3 months old. 1st I'll brush off gunk with a small children's toothbrush & then dry burn. If that doesn't work, I'll slide the wick out of the coil & torch it again. Sometimes I can still gras du in there, so I'll use my steamer wand on my espresso machine to blast it off & then do a light torching. Reinstall & vape away.

Good Luck!

 

[snottyragsdale]

I've got wicks that are over 3 months old. 1st I'll brush off gunk with a small children's toothbrush & then dry burn. If that doesn't work, I'll slide the wick out of the coil & torch it again. Sometimes I can still gras du in there, so I'll use my steamer wand on my espresso machine to blast it off & then do a light torching. Reinstall & vape away.

Good Luck!

Well, I brushed and dry burned , torched it , then boiled for 10 minutes in a ROLLING boil and torched it and dry burned it... Not nad a nudda!

Thanks for trying to help...maybe someone out there has the same problem and can chime in? PLEASE

 

[j4mmin42]

Yeah, this has happened to me. It's a combination of the specific juice that you're using, and that your coil isn't vaporizing all of the liquid- it's boiling it. 32 Kanthal has this problem sometimes, where it just doesn't have enough power to efficiently handle the amount of juice a good genesis wick can throw at it. Try switching to a different flavor of juice, and either raise the voltage, lower the coils' resistance, or switch to 28 kanthal.

 

[Thrasher]

i pull the wick and torch it real fast till the coil section is red then rinse in hot water then take and roll it a bit in my fingers crunching it a bit then a another quick rinse and a shake then i have a pill bottle with pg in it. i drop the wick in and shake it to remove the water then reload it into the atty. i have wicks in the 3-4 week old range and still work fine. with a drillbit style coil the wick pops out and in real easy.

 

[Rule62]

I don't remove the wicks for cleaning. I use a syringe, and fill the tank with Everclear, swish it around, and pull the Everclear back out. I may do this a second time, depending what was in the tank last. I then dry burn, and brush whatever crud is on the coils off with a Dentek brush. Check for hot spots, adjust as necessary, fill back up, and vape. I have wicks and coils that are 2-3 months old that still work perfectly.

 

[j4mmin42]

I swear, Everclear has about a million uses (and counting). It's like liquid duct tape...

 

[2GLR]

I brush the gunk off, soak in PGA (everclear), then torch the PGA off.

 

[snottyragsdale]

Lmao! Better than duct tape unless you know a way to get inebreated with that!

I swear, Everclear has about a million uses (and counting). It's like liquid duct tape...

Thanks for the tips guys, I'm gonna make a new wick tomorrow and try these methods on the "dead" ones.

 

[snottyragsdale]

I figured out what I was doing wrong. After soaking in hot hot water and toothbrushing off, I dry burned the entire wick, pulling it through the coil, where before I was just dry burning the top. Takes a while, around 10 mins, then soaked in pg. Works fine.