I find you get better flavor (and no "break in" period) if you boil the.cotton balls first. Just dump um all in a big pot with water and boil for 15-20 minutes. Then squeeze as much water as you can out of them and put them in the oven on warm until there dry (30 min or so). Sounds like a lot of extra work but it's not, just do the whole bag at once.
I will definitely boil any cotton I use, just for the sake of the taste. But actually I'm more the sort that might do 3 or 4 at once, or maybe even just 1 at a time, since it appears you could get a lot of wicks out of just one cotton ball. Actually to dry just one or two of them, I'd probably put them in my "dry box", a small sealable plastic box in which I have numerous silica-gel packets (they come in my inhalers' mylar wrapping), and put it outside in the sun; it got to 87 degrees today, so between the heat and the silica-gel, they'd be dry in no time, without a potential fire hazard. I use that dry box to dry out the inside of glass droppers and small bottles, works great for that.
@76bridget, I used a whole strand of P&C last night, but as soon as I got the airflow closed off about 3/4, I started getting dry hits, so I changed it to just 3 of the strands. That worked great last night, but today I started getting the burnt taste again, so I checked it and right where it contacts the coil, this one was very dark brown too. So I split the yarn strand in half, using just 2 strands of it, doubled it thru the coil, and once I had it pulled up thru the chimney, I separated them completely, so that all the strands were free, before tucking them back in. that seemed to be working pretty well, but tonight when I changed out the juice for my lower-mg nighttime juice, I noted that the strands weren't really long enough, so I changed it again, using half a strand again, but left them a bit longer before I tucked them back in. If any of that makes sense. It's working well, and that's really all I care about.
Andria
