My first SS wick

[Vaslovik]

Okay, I did it, I made up a stainless steel wick just like the videos on YT showed me, wound the coil 5/4, stuck it in a Protank head, tested it at 1.51 ohms, put a bit of a flavor wick on it, 2mm, and vaped. It's fabulous! This morning's cloud chase has paid off handsomely

I can almost OVERVAPE on this thing! Matocumulus vapes with great throat hit!

I made a second wick, wrapping it 6/5, which tested at 2.0 ohms, but it didn't vape quite as well as the 1.5 ohm wick, so I'm not using that.

 

[release the kraken]

Which mesh did you go with? And from where? Do you seriously have to have a torch to do SS? I haven't done too much research but I did watch a couple of videos here and there, and the whole owning a torch thing is a little over the top for me personally. I'm assuming the mesh wick allows the juice to flow a little less restricted?

 

[release the kraken]

Hey we might hit 100 posts in the same thread. With this I am at 99 and I see you are 99 with starting this thread...on the second one do you think you didn't like it because the wick itself was too tight, or because of the higher ohms?

 

[Vaslovik]

Something especially delightful about the SS wick, if your wrap doesn't test out at the ohms you are after, you can just pull it out, run a pin through it, perhaps torch it off and de-carbon it, and wrap it again, quite unlike silica wick! Well now, I think I might just be finished with silica for wicking, too bad I recently bought 20 ft. of it.

 

[Vaslovik]

Which mesh did you go with? And from where? Do you seriously have to have a torch to do SS? I haven't done too much research but I did watch a couple of videos here and there, and the whole owning a torch thing is a little over the top for me personally. I'm assuming the mesh wick allows the juice to flow a little less restricted?

Well the torch is necessary to oxidize the mesh before you roll it up into a wick. This is shown in numerous YT vids. I had gotten a little pencil torch at the local flea market for annealing my kanthal wire for coils, and it works very well for oxidizing the mesh.

I used 400 mesh in this wick, but will be trying other meshes as well. This SS mesh was graciously given to me by a good fellow by the name of Gator, at Save on Vapor here in Naples. I had a quite enjoyable and very informative talk with him there yesterday and I heartily recommend that store.

Yes, the mesh wick does indeed seem to provide for a better flow of juice, since you still have a channel though it where the pin was, and because it's a mesh as well. In any case, it works far better than silica wicks I've used, and provides a cleaner taste as well.

I have also determined that the 2mm flavor wick is not at all necessary and took it out.

 

[Wayneiac]

I seem to do fine oxidizing my ss with a regular lighter. A neat trick is to wrap the ss around a few threads of silica making a silica center to your ss wick. No need for a flavor wick at that point, and seems to help with any leaking issues.