I tried that but had less feed than with the cotton barbells. I was using a straight rolled 400 mesh wick with Japanese cotton wrapped once on each end and going down into the well. The cotton wicks A++, and supplies the mesh wick. That worked super.
My all mesh wick was kind of sizzly and lacking good flavor. I believe that some burning pockets can easily exist on a micro scale where the mesh and the coil don't make good contact. Small amounts of Acrolein would be easily produced from overheating VG on the uncooled coil wire, bringing us a bad taste (and toxicity). Softer wicks better conform to the coil. But I think that with some experimentation the all mesh method could work fine too.
My mistakes were 1) too narrow a roll of mesh 2) the portion in the well was on its side, I think slitting it or otherwise exposing more surface would make for better fluid entry. It's tricky to have a perfectly tight wrap of wire on mesh without any shorting. Sliding the roll into the coil wears off oxidation. Wrapping the wire onto the roll makes it hard to oxidize the metals. Not sure how to best do this yet. The potential benefit is not having to change out any cotton, just rinse and dry burn.
Thanks for chiming in Fernand, good to see you're a step ahead of me!
You've hit my 2 major concerns...
1. Wicking. When considering a gennie, the metal wick is fully immersed in
juice in the tank, even then every gennie user knows the old tilt & roll once
juice level goes below half or so. I can't see how mesh will absorb enough
juice laying on the V4 deck or touching it ... in any configuration .... to keep fully saturated. So cotton or rayon tails are needed just to get enough juice to the mesh. I was considering stuffing some rayon on each side..... or as you, wrap it as part of the mesh wick. Either way, not optimum, nor easy.
2. Shorting. I never had to worry about shorts in my old RSST with a plastic tank & insulated juice holes.But on a V4 the wick could be laying on the deck, or touching the chimney... even with cotton/rayon tails or wraps around it. Old school ways say torch the foil first to carbonize it, not really sure this micro-layer of carbon really works, or more-so in a gennie because the foil wick is saturated with juice and not conductive.
Either way, i believe, & you've confirmed, that a wire wick in a V4 may present more problems than it solves
