I haven't read all of the posts in this thread, so forgive me if I say anything redundant, but here are my tips, from most important to least important. Also, this is to get MY ideal vape, which is a warm to hot, dense vape with little throat hit and an airy, open draw (I leave my airflow wide open). Everyone has different preferences. If you prefer a cooler vape, in the second step, don't lower the coil quite as much, among other things.
1) PRACTICE. Start with simple builds. I find 24 gauge kanthal A1 to be the easiest to build with, and it's great to learn with. Get those wraps as close as you can all the way around the circumference of the coil. Just barely overlap the edge of the wire over the edge of the previous wrap and keep tension on the wire while you wrap. This forces each wrap to be touching when you finish. The less the coil moves when you adjust it, the more uniform it is when it fires evenly and the better it distributes heat to the wick. Also, you will build more consistently this way. With multi-coils, the more consistent, the better. Coils that are slightly different, even with the same number of wraps and the same diameter, will never fire perfectly evenly, and that will affect your vape.
2) Center, level, and lower your coils, in that order. Since you're building on a Mutation, you have 2 center post holes. Each coil's positive lead should be in the post hole on the opposite side from it's negative lead. If you're using A1 or nichrome, touch the coil to the the posts, tighten the leads down, then use whatever you wrapped the coil on to pull it away from the posts. A1 and nichrome stretch rather easily, so you should be able to get it just the right distance from the posts by doing this. Then push the coil from whichever side of the deck it is closest to in order to center it. Once the coil is centered, tilt it to make the centerline fot eh coil parallel to the deck. Now push it down until the bottom of the coil is just above the lip of the juice well (you may have to re-level it after this, it may move a little bit). The lower it is, the hotter it vapes. Not sure why, that's just my experience. Once all that is done, then you adjust the coils for hot spots.
3) Make sure your coils glow PERFECTLY. You want them to glow from the center out, and if you have multi-coils (dual, quad, etc.) you want them to heat up simultaneously. If one heats up faster than the other, you get an uneven vape. Invest in a set of ceramic tweezers. Even the most well-wrapped coils rarely heat perfectly once they're installed. Don't hold the fire button down when you have hot spots, as you can distort or hot-cut the coil, as well as damage your batteries. Instead, gently pulse the fire button until the coil glows softly, then pinch the ends of the coil together. If you have ceramic tweezers, you can pinch the coils while you fire it, as they are non-conductive. If you can't get your hot spots out by pinching the coils, try strumming. Gently pulse the coil until it is evenly heated, then gently rake your tweezers across the coil where you have hot spots. It works wonders for fine-tuning the coils.
4) Learn how you like to wick. Do you tend to over-drip so you can take more hits between dripping? If so, use more cotton. Do you like to drip every 2-3 hits? Then only put enough cotton in to barely touch the bottom of the deck.
5) Learn how your airflow works, and build for the vape you want. If your airflow doesn't work well with your build, you won't get a satisfying vape. If you build to a lower resistance, you will generally see reduced flavor and more vapor. You'll want more airflow for this. If you want better flavor and less vapor, build to a higher resistance with less airflow. These are just general rules and there are many exceptions, but for basic builds it usually holds true. If you like flavor but hate ramp-up times from kanthal, my recommendation would be to build parallel coils. They increase surface area and reduce resistance, so a single coil 6 wrap parallel with 24g A1 and a 2.5mm inside diameter should give you a relatively warm, flavorful vape without too much ramp up and about a .3-.4 ohm resistance if I remember correctly from the last time I built one. Also, you should try to center your airflow on your coils. If one end of the coil gets more air moving past it than the other, that side of the coil will be cooler than the side not getting as much air, resulting in an uneven vape.
6) Once you've mastered simple, single-wire coils, look into coil theories. Coils that have more surface area in contact with the wick will produce more vapor at once. Coils with channels and such will also help the wicking process by drawing liquid into the coil, allowing the wick to pull in juice faster. I like stapled fused claptons and stapled helix builds the best, because they wick efficiently, have a large surface area, and I can build large coils (greater surface area) with low resistances. NEVER vape beyond your battery's capacity. I usually run around .15 on a 5 wrap single coil with nichrome, on a Sony VTC4. Ohms law: amperage draw = volts / ohms. 4.2 /.15 = 28. That's nearing the threshold for my 30 amp batteries, and I change them when I begin to see a drop in performance. I leave plenty of room for safety when vaping this close to my amp limit, and never run my batteries below 3.7-3.8 volts. Dead batteries don't play nicely with low-ohm builds.
7) Don't change your setup because someone tells you it's wrong. Hell, if you've found something you like already, don't change it because of this post. If it works for you and you like it, it's perfect. People will always be telling you that you can make it better if you do this, or that. It might make it better for them, but that's them, not you. I have people tell me all the time that my setup is wrong, but it produces the perfect blend of flavor, vapor production, density, draw resistance, temperature, and throat hit for me, so I don't change it. Vape what you like to vape, not what other people like to vape. They're called PERSONAL vaporizers for a reason.
And that's that! Have fun building and experimenting, it will take time to learn exactly how you need to build to get your perfect vape. Hopefully this was helpful for you and others who read this with the same questions.
- Nick
EDIT: I build on my Mutation X v2, so the posts are pretty much the same and the side airflow is near-identical, but you have bottom airflow and I do not, so that's something to keep in mind.
