Got my nickel wire and couldn't resist trying my hand at making a coil, using the fine threaded screw method mentioned earlier, and sticking it on the
rba deck that came with the Kanger Subtank Mini. It worked perfectly. I turned out a picture perfect 10 wrap coil as evenly spaced as the threads on the screw and ended up at exactly 0.2 ohms, so, even though there is no temperature control, it would still fire on the
istick at 20 watts. Wicking it, as I suspected it might, messed up the perfectly spaced aspect of it, but it still fired so I filled up the Subtank Mini with Crème de la Vie and took it for a spin.
Wow! Just wow! Crème de la Vie is a magnificent rich and creamy
juice. Right in the zone of my preferred flavor profile even though I'm not too big on custards. It's not too custardy. It has the potential to knock Ground Breaking out of my top spot, but I need to run through a few milliliters before I can make that kind of serious call.
UPDATE: I just wanted to add a couple afterthoughts for the couple of you that may have some interest in this coil building experiment. Everybody else will almost certainly be bored by this, so you should probably just skip it.
I was using an 1/8th inch by 3 inch toggle bolt to wrap on and, because it was so long, it was reasonably easy to hold onto while wrapping. I think part of the wicking problem with this soft nickel wire was due in part to the small inside diameter of the coil.
The 1/8th inch is measured from the outside to the outside peaks of the threads and the wire sat down in the valleys. I'm guessing the inside diameter of my coil couldn't have been much more than a 1/16th of an inch. It could be as large as something just under 2 mm I suppose *shrugs*, which would probably work fine with stiffer wire like a 28 AWG Kanthal, but for a first timer trying to thread wicking material through the much softer and smaller gauge (30 AWG) wire with such a small inside coil diameter, without a feel for the amount of tension it would create, the endeavor to maintain the even spacing of the wraps was doomed from the start. I'm just happy to have nailed the ohms on my first try. Beginners luck, no doubt.
Anyway, on my next attempt, I plan on using a 3/16th X 4 inch toggle bolt and if it works as hoped I might just make a handle for it. I'm guessing that will give me something just over a 3 mm inside diameter which might let me get away with 8 wraps for a 0.2 ohm coil. That might also have the advantage of being a little easier to fit between the posts on this smallish RBA deck. Thoughts?