Cotton - How Difficult is it to Keep Wet?

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Kemosabe

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I don't find cotton to be at all difficult to keep wet. I use a mini vivi nova most of the time, using short wicks that don't hang into the juice, and just make sure to tilt it enough to wet the wicks every few hits. I rebuild them after about a week, and rarely find any loss of fiber at the coil. Sometimes it seems slightly singed on the outer threads, but not significantly.

I currently use Aunt Lydia's bamboo crochet thread, and find it to be a bit more resilient than cotton. Hemp string would probably be even better, but I've not tried it.

Personally, I wouldn't call the fumes from burning cotton 'noxious'. Processed cotton should be around 99% cellulose, which generally produces carbon dioxide, water, and very little particulate when burned. I'd imagine that there would be traces of other chemicals, but we're talking about a minute amount of material over a fairly long time, if it gets burnt at all.

I do a burn test on all of the organic wick materials that I've used, just to try and make sure that they aren't mixing in synthetic fibers. Cellulose-based fibers should burn with a nice yellow-orange flame, with little ash left behind, and smell slightly of burning paper. I burned a clump of cotton balls once, out of curiosity, and it was barely noticeable in the air.

this is great to know. the way the ecf member warned about the burning cotton was scary. i wish i could find the post. the member had a specific chamical name that was produced. and it was presented as a fact, rather than just someone saying it tasted bad. but for nobody to have recognized it by now, must have been my perception of the post rather than actual fact.
 

Kemosabe

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I believe that post was in the "Safe vs. dangerous" thread (search will bring it up) but at 2700+ posts I couldn't tell you who or where. Took me a week of evenings to get through it!

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/modding-forum/284030-wick-materials-safe-vs-dangerous.html

i bet your right. but i'll be a monkeys uncle if im going to search through the entire thread. i think someone would have remembered what it was by now if it were anything of great importance. at least i hope. it sure sounded like it at the time. thats what confuses me. oh well.
 

tmcase

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this is great to know. the way the ecf member warned about the burning cotton was scary. i wish i could find the post. the member had a specific chamical name that was produced. and it was presented as a fact, rather than just someone saying it tasted bad. but for nobody to have recognized it by now, must have been my perception of the post rather than actual fact.

Could the word you are looking for be acrolein?

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...aterials-safe-vs-dangerous-2.html#post5855614
 

Kemosabe

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Boom. you nailed it! thats it. after reading more about it, it seems like acrolein is produced from any over-used wick. :facepalm: but the organic wick will burn up before it can produce too much acrolein. so, my original thought is quite the opposite of what EvilGrym is saying. organic cotton/bamboo is better becasue youll taste the burn before you inhale too much acrolein. but with SS, the wick wont burn but itll get superheated due to the gunk, and acrolein gets produced in larger quantities. he also thinks that the extra TH sensation from SS is not nicotine but acrolein. double facepalm. i loved the TH i got from SS. i really hope its a nicotine TH and not a acrolein TH becasue i really liked it! maybe its a blessing tha ti cant get my RBA to work for me. what a cruel cruel blessing. :facepalm:

so now i guess ive got the choice of broken down fiberglass shards if i use silica, acrolein if i use SS, or no TH if i use cotton. great. just great. :(
 
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Kemosabe

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I believe there is a juice that will give you TH if that's what you want regardless of what kind of delivery system you use.

very ture. however the TH from stainless stell mesh is at least twice as hard as the TH from silica. i vape 18mg most of the time and let me tell you: it felt like i was vaping 36mg juice. the TH was that good. but of course it didnt make me sick because it was only 18mg. ive never actually vaped 36mg, 30 is the highest ive gone, but this felt even stronger. it was amazing. my ultimate goal is to get the best possible TH for the mg im using. the SS TH is so fantastic i could go on for days about it. i think its my new religion LOL.
 

LucentShadow

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very ture. however the TH from stainless stell mesh is at least twice as hard as the TH from silica. i vape 18mg most of the time and let me tell you: it felt like i was vaping 36mg juice. the TH was that good. but of course it didnt make me sick because it was only 18mg. ive never actually vaped 36mg, 30 is the highest ive gone, but this felt even stronger. it was amazing. my ultimate goal is to get the best possible TH for the mg im using. the SS TH is so fantastic i could go on for days about it. i think its my new religion LOL.

I would wager that the increased TH from stainless steel is probably due to some amount of overheated e-liquid. Whether that is producing acrolein or some other irritant, there's no conclusive information that I've found, but overheated e-liquid is generally very irritating in my experience. I know I'm more sensitive than many in that regard, though.

I've never used SS wicks, so I can't say with any real certainty that my suspicion is true, but if it's a rolled SS vertical wick that only pulls liquid from the bottom end, and has a vertical coil at the top end, It would seem to me that the top end of the coil may be underfed, and overheating what liquid that makes it up there. I don't like the idea of this design, personally, and so have never tried it.

If you're using horizontal coil with a SS wick that pulls liquid from both ends of the wick, I'd be a bit puzzled as to why it would produce more TH than a different wick material would, unless it's just from vaporizing more nicotine liquid than your other wick choice does. If that's the case, organic fiber wicks should compare well in that regard.

For what's it worth, I've found increased TH from switching from silica to cotton or bamboo (rayon.) I attribute that mostly to the better atomization that these materials result in for me increasing my nicotine per hit. That's my theory, anyway.
 

JazzyTech

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Boom. you nailed it! thats it. after reading more about it, it seems like acrolein is produced from any over-used wick. :facepalm: but the organic wick will burn up before it can produce too much acrolein. so, my original thought is quite the opposite of what EvilGrym is saying. organic cotton/bamboo is better becasue youll taste the burn before you inhale too much acrolein. but with SS, the wick wont burn but itll get superheated due to the gunk, and acrolein gets produced in larger quantities. he also thinks that the extra TH sensation from SS is not nicotine but acrolein. double facepalm. i loved the TH i got from SS. i really hope its a nicotine TH and not a acrolein TH becasue i really liked it! maybe its a blessing tha ti cant get my RBA to work for me. what a cruel cruel blessing. :facepalm:

so now i guess ive got the choice of broken down fiberglass shards if i use silica, acrolein if i use SS, or no TH if i use cotton. great. just great. :(

Although I've had no luck with it, There's quite the fan-following for bamboo thread. It wicks as good as, if not better than cotton, and has a slight woodlike undertone. Apparently it helps with a decent TH and is more durable than cotton. If you've reached the end of your wicks, then maybe "Aunt Lydia's bamboo thread is worth a try. See my signature for a link with more info (tomcatt's wiki).
 

Kemosabe

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I would wager that the increased TH from stainless steel is probably due to some amount of overheated e-liquid. Whether that is producing acrolein or some other irritant, there's no conclusive information that I've found, but overheated e-liquid is generally very irritating in my experience. I know I'm more sensitive than many in that regard, though.

I've never used SS wicks, so I can't say with any real certainty that my suspicion is true, but if it's a rolled SS vertical wick that only pulls liquid from the bottom end, and has a vertical coil at the top end, It would seem to me that the top end of the coil may be underfed, and overheating what liquid that makes it up there. I don't like the idea of this design, personally, and so have never tried it.

If you're using horizontal coil with a SS wick that pulls liquid from both ends of the wick, I'd be a bit puzzled as to why it would produce more TH than a different wick material would, unless it's just from vaporizing more nicotine liquid than your other wick choice does. If that's the case, organic fiber wicks should compare well in that regard.

For what's it worth, I've found increased TH from switching from silica to cotton or bamboo (rayon.) I attribute that mostly to the better atomization that these materials result in for me increasing my nicotine per hit. That's my theory, anyway.

Although I've had no luck with it, There's quite the fan-following for bamboo thread. It wicks as good as, if not better than cotton, and has a slight woodlike undertone. Apparently it helps with a decent TH and is more durable than cotton. If you've reached the end of your wicks, then maybe "Aunt Lydia's bamboo thread is worth a try. See my signature for a link with more info (tomcatt's wiki).

this is fantastic news. i plan to try cotton as well as bamboo. i was concerned after hearing reports of weak to no TH from cotton. that would not bode well with me. not well at all.
im also hearing about hemp being a good wicking material. makes sense. stonger than cotton. im not sure about the flavor though. couldnt imagine hemp having a clean enough flavor, but who knows.
just wondering: what about bamboo resulted in your no luck? bad flavor? poor wicking?
 

Ratman

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I didn't care for the Bamboo either. The woody taste never went away for me. Hemp was even worse, tasted the hemp more than the juice and it wasn't a good taste either. taste is of course subjective and they are all so cheap, one should try them all.

DMA cotton embroidery thread works best for me so far. i use it in all of my bottom feeder RBA's. 4 strands of 1mm thread, and now starting to use it in my genesis RTA's. They do not seem to last as long in them tho. Could just be the way I am building them of course as I am still learning the ins and outs of DiD's DuD's and thuds.
 

Kemosabe

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I didn't care for the Bamboo either. The woody taste never went away for me. Hemp was even worse, tasted the hemp more than the juice and it wasn't a good taste either. taste is of course subjective and they are all so cheap, one should try them all.

DMA cotton embroidery thread works best for me so far. i use it in all of my bottom feeder RBA's. 4 strands of 1mm thread, and now starting to use it in my genesis RTA's. They do not seem to last as long in them tho. Could just be the way I am building them of course as I am still learning the ins and outs of DiD's DuD's and thuds.

same here regarding DuDs and thuds so to speak. glad to hear your input on the flavor from bamboo and hemp vs cotton. i tend to think id be a cotton guy from what ive been reading. but like you say, theyre all so cheap we really should just try em all.
 
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