For those who were asking: yes, the plastic laurlok end on a 15ga blunt tip syringe does light on fire when you hit it with a blow torch
Decided to take a couple cm off a solid 500 mesh wick (I think I prefer the flavor when gravity feeds the wick better than the capillary feed), so unrolled/rerolled on a 15ga needle to make the center channel. Not sure when, but with 30awg I've gotten in the habit of doing a "set burn" once the coil is wrapped (I wrap on the wick before installing) holding it snug with hemostats. For what ever reason today I wrapped on a needle tip instead of my drill bit. Smelled something funny, turned off the torch and realized there were still flames.
For what it's worth, I really like a ~45mm 500 mesh with a 15g a center channel rolled wick hole width on a Mini. 30awg, annealed and wrapped 4/5 - ~1.4ohm.
I have been having a nightmare over the last few days on my no.2 DID, I put a Smokteck shorty DC clear plastic tank on it a while back excited about seeing my juice level wick etc. I have had intermittent sucess with my set ups on this for days now, I've had solid #500 120mm with 9wrap 28g nichrome, with snug wickhole fit & and my adjustable breather screw half open,#500 85mm with 18g center hole 5/6 wrap 30g Kanthal,#500 85mm rolled solid to 2.8mm with gap all round wickhole 10wrap 28g nichrome, even #500 25mm holow 2.8mm stuffed with organic cotton wool pad 10wrap 28g nichrome, ALL with strange burnt taste. I was getting to the point where.......... Well you can guess I was losing faith,however during all this I had DID No.1 with solid #500 180mm with 6wrap 28g nichrome, with snug wickhole fit & and my adjustable breather screw half open, running like a dream on the Paps.
I thought I had it sussed!!!!!
So tenacious stubborn mule that I am I took drastic action and pulled my No.2 DID to bits, and found this strange foul smelling gunk on the ss center post an in the center channel!
I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner, but have heard of bicarb of soda being used to clean jewellery, so every part of my DID went into a glass with 4 tablespoons of bicarb and then I filled up with boiling water, stirred and left for a few minutes poured contents into a sieve ran hot water over to rinse and hey presto sparkly DID parts.
I then returned the plastic tube to it's carto endcaps and reclaimed my gleaming ss DID body from carto hell.
I reassembled and to rid it of all bad ju-ju set about recoiling in a way I haven't used for months, I always use the drill bit method these days, but I DIDnt want to jinx this new rebuild.
I have been thinking about the solid wicks I've been building and wondering if they are too tight to really hold any quantity of juice so first of I grasped my #500, 85mm wick rolled solid to 2.8mm and rolled it the opposite way to loosen it up till it was around 3.3mm, then a quick re-oxidize and dropped it in the wick hole,then proceeded to coil a 5wrap 30g Kanthal actually on the wick while it was in place in the DID, man that was fiddly compared to the drill bit method, and I was sure I was scraping of the oxidization as I went.
But, it was a nice tight/snug wrap and after a quick dry burn and the odd coil nudge with a tooth pic I got a steady 1.5Ohm and an even glow on all coils, quick drip of liquid onto the coil and all looked sweet.
Filled vaped and, OMFG finally a DIDworthy vape. I'm using the same juice I pulled out of it before the rebuild so taste will improve when I refill with fresh but, thank god I persevered. This setup even runs great on my Paps, which surprised me as my other setup in DID No.1 is 0.9Ohms.
As for the strange gunk..... All I can surmise it that the smokteck tank was somehow hindering my poor DID, and I now won't be trying a clear tank until Pyrex comes to MMV.
