Complete and utter SILICA NEWBY! Advice would be obliged :).

[treehead]

OK, I have about a pound's worth of Silica and Eko-wool from the complimentary wick's that my past RDA purchase's have thrown in. So I think it's time to lay down the cotton for a little, and give her a shot.

~The last time I used silica was when I was vaping my aspire tanks, and their pre-built atomizers came with silica pre-installed. So I know the basic idea of silica and building, but I've never actually used it. I've heard some people suggest unraveling their rope once through the coils, heard something about burning it before hand, and don't burn it because it can shard (I doubt I'll burn it at all, because I'm used to sensitive cotton).

Any tips or tricks silica guru's? Thank ya kindly in advance!

(I'm just going to install it in some dual vertical 24ga, .2ohms, 1/16th", in my tobh atty with nothing else but juice.)

 

[p7willm]

I was planning on trying silica too. It looks to me as if there is none using it.

Come on silica gurus.

 

[vanillayo]

Used to use silica but tried cotton yarn and haven't looked back. The flavor is a lot better!

 

[TheColdHandedVG]

OK, I have about a pound's worth of Silica and Eko-wool from the complimentary wick's that my past RDA purchase's have thrown in. So I think it's time to lay down the cotton for a little, and give her a shot.

~The last time I used silica was when I was vaping my aspire tanks, and their pre-built atomizers came with silica pre-installed. So I know the basic idea of silica and building, but I've never actually used it. I've heard some people suggest unraveling their rope once through the coils, heard something about burning it before hand, and don't burn it because it can shard (I doubt I'll burn it at all, because I'm used to sensitive cotton).

Any tips or tricks silica guru's? Thank ya kindly in advance!

(I'm just going to install it in some dual vertical 24ga, .2ohms, 1/16th", in my tobh atty with nothing else but juice.)

I never liked using silica on a micro coil. I always felt silica wicks only worked well if you wrapped your wire directly around the silica itself. You won't be able to make any pretty looking coils this way but I felt the performance of a coil wrapped directly on the silica was just better, especially since in my experience it is much less absorbent than cotton and I needed more of it than I would cotton so making a micro coil and trying to get enough silica inside that coil or under it just didn't work out well for me.

So to sum it up I would recommend direct wraps on the silica as my experience with building this way worked out pretty good, and other ways didn't work out so well.

 

[treehead]

I actually gave that a shot the first time, and it worked pretty good, it wasn't very efficient but it vaped real good. It's gotta be one of the easiest builds on the plant too, that's a plus. For the most part I'm sticking with cotton, but I did wrap a decent dual coil at 5/64th's (that actually looked perfectly purdy ) and got the silica in there without a fuss (a little bit of VG on the ends kept it all together, and a surgeons hand helps too haha). I built it super low at .14 to really test the silica, and it held up well, still burnt when pretty much dry, but nowhere near like cotton.

The biggest use I found for it was to take a few of the individual fibers out of the rope, and use that as a wick for a super-nano coil (used in conjunction with cotton as well), and it made a much better setup with that slight change. Mainly on the dry hits, it kept the inside of the ridiculously tiny coil wet, making for a nice dense vape relatively dry hit free.

If I ever use it again I'll use it how pretty much everyone does, the simple wrap-on method, I just wanted to try something different and really see what I could do.

Thanks for the input brother!

 

[treehead]

Used to use silica but tried cotton yarn and haven't looked back. The flavor is a lot better!

Thanks nilla, cotton really is superior in the wick world . I'm glad you found it, that's basically all I've been using myself. Our situations are flipped, I've always used cotton, and am trying silica for the first time, and it's ok. It's a little bit of a waste on battery power to vape it how basically everyone does (wrap directly on the silica as a guide), but I managed to get it cleanly through a 5/64th's drill bit, and it vaped really well. The only real benefit was the lack of dry-hits (well it went dry faster, without any burning), but that was sacrificed for wick speed, and slight loss of flavor. Thank ya!

 

[TheColdHandedVG]

I actually gave that a shot the first time, and it worked pretty good, it wasn't very efficient but it vaped real good. It's gotta be one of the easiest builds on the plant too, that's a plus. For the most part I'm sticking with cotton, but I did wrap a decent dual coil at 5/64th's (that actually looked perfectly purdy ) and got the silica in there without a fuss (a little bit of VG on the ends kept it all together, and a surgeons hand helps too haha). I built it super low at .14 to really test the silica, and it held up well, still burnt when pretty much dry, but nowhere near like cotton.

The biggest use I found for it was to take a few of the individual fibers out of the rope, and use that as a wick for a super-nano coil (used in conjunction with cotton as well), and it made a much better setup with that slight change. Mainly on the dry hits, it kept the inside of the ridiculously tiny coil wet, making for a nice dense vape relatively dry hit free.

If I ever use it again I'll use it how pretty much everyone does, the simple wrap-on method, I just wanted to try something different and really see what I could do.

Thanks for the input brother!

Yeah, it definitely is easy doing direct wraps on silica. That is probably one of the easiest builds I have tried to date.

I just don't like how you can't really tighten up the silica and then loosen it after feeding it through the coil, so you can't get a whole lot in there (at least when I tried doing it). I like being able to get 10 hits off my dripper with a s--- load of cotton nice and tight in there. I don't get the best flavor but I mostly just care about the throat hit, which is pretty solid when you use a lot of cotton.