Ok, so it's normal to need to replace the cotton every few days? I really thought that I was doing something wrong. I use the kanger because it was the first thing that I was able to get working fairly consistently. I've been somewhat intimidated by rda's and rba's. I picked up a little squid to try it out and I really like that so I'm planning to start looking to upgrade that. What do you prefer to use (rba/rda) if you don't mind my asking and what would you recommend for a newbie? I don't have a lot of cash to drop on this stuff (I have 3 year old twins) so I'm not looking at the high end. The t3 is good enough to keep me off analogs so anything better than that is icing on a pretty good cake!
Cotton Wick Pre-Soak
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I replace the cotton in my coils about every 15-30ml, depending on the juice as some seem to gunk the wick and coil a lot faster than others. If you are burning the cotton in your wicks you probably have the cotton packed to densely in the coil, slowing down the flow of the juice. In my experience cotton balls seem to wick faster than cotton threads such as cheese cloth or yarn. Cotton threads do need a good soak in my opinion so your idea there is a great one. Cotton ball wicks really don't need a soak in my experience as long as you wet them good after installing them.
When I make my wicks out of cotton balls I don't even roll it into a wick shape, I unroll the cotton ball and then gently pull off a part of it and pull that through the wick without compressing it. This piece should be roughly the same diameter as the inside of the coil you are pulling it through, maybe just slightly larger. Since cotton swells once it gets wet this piece fills the coil nicely. I tried one day to get a dry hit from this setup and took seven straight hits on seven straight breaths and the last hit was as good as the first. Well I think it was anyways, I was getting a little light headed by that point so I stopped.
The toughest part of rebuilding a BCC with cotton is finding the delicate balance between enough wicking to keep the wicks wet but not so much that you suck to much juice out of the tank during your draw. My t3's and evods are slowly getting replaced with vivi novas now that I have figured out my method of coil building works as good in them as in a BCC, but without alot of the drawbacks of the BCC design. Setting up a BCC coil to be great is very much about setting it up to handle the strength of your draw and the airflow of whatever you are using it on, and how hard I draw will vary a lot through out the day and depends on my mood alot also.
When I make my wicks out of cotton balls I don't even roll it into a wick shape, I unroll the cotton ball and then gently pull off a part of it and pull that through the wick without compressing it. This piece should be roughly the same diameter as the inside of the coil you are pulling it through, maybe just slightly larger. Since cotton swells once it gets wet this piece fills the coil nicely. I tried one day to get a dry hit from this setup and took seven straight hits on seven straight breaths and the last hit was as good as the first. Well I think it was anyways, I was getting a little light headed by that point so I stopped.
The toughest part of rebuilding a BCC with cotton is finding the delicate balance between enough wicking to keep the wicks wet but not so much that you suck to much juice out of the tank during your draw. My t3's and evods are slowly getting replaced with vivi novas now that I have figured out my method of coil building works as good in them as in a BCC, but without alot of the drawbacks of the BCC design. Setting up a BCC coil to be great is very much about setting it up to handle the strength of your draw and the airflow of whatever you are using it on, and how hard I draw will vary a lot through out the day and depends on my mood alot also.
It sounds like I am packing the cotton balls in too tight, as I tend to roll them into a wick shape and twist them pretty good when I do. Never thought about that so thanks. I do have a hard time getting the BCC just right, every time. That's what led me to try the cotton thread/yarn, I wanted something that would be the same, every time. I was having a rough go at it trying to get some consistency. I recently bought some stock replacement coils with the intention of taking a break from rebuilding them, but I had to buy the newer T3S style coils with a new base and either they don't work as well as the older style did, or I remember the older ones as being much better than they actually were. Either way, they don't compare to a cotton wick when it's working right and I'm not willing to settle for the subpar performance when I know I can get better with a little bit of effort (and occasionally a great deal of frustration). I'll try a really loose cotton ball wick and see what it gets me. Sorry this post rambles so much, I've been interrupted about 3 times through this and each time I've come back I can't seem to get back on that earlier track!
Just wanted to check back in and say that you guys were right about the cotton balls - i was packing too much cotton in and rolling the wick too tight. I make my wicks looser now and the cotton balls work so much better that i haven't even messed with the cotton thread that much lately. I still haven't picked up any 30 ga kanthal, last time i ordered it was out of stock and didn't want to shop around and pay extra shipping. Thats next on my list. Thanks again for all of the tips, they made a world of difference for me.
I use cotton yarn too. I don't pre-soak the yarn but I do take off the chimney of say a Protank and put a few drops on the wicks. I think pre-soaking would be messy as hell.
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