I know that the phoenix has taken a back seat to many of the new, cheap rebuildables out right now such as the DID and it's inexpensive clones but I still use the phoenix.I have come to some sort of mastery of the thing, I think, of which I would like to share my tips and my process for setting up the coil.
Firstly, and feel free to correct me if you've experienced something to the contrary.
The size of the air inlet hole is proportional to the amount of vapor your coil makes. What I mean is when I got the Phoenix, it came with a very, very small, long coil made from very thin (high gauge) wire. The hole seemed reasonable and I didn't notice it being particularly airy or tight. Only when I started getting into really low resistance coils, did I feel like the draw was tightening up.
It was.
The more dense the vapor, the harder it is to pull.
I drilled out the hole to 1/16" when I started using < (less than) 1.7 ohm coils.
Now I'm using 0.9 to 1.1 ohm coils and when they are in perfect form, the draw tightens up again.
I don't think I would go to 5/64" although that's not a great jump in size I could probably pull it off but there isn't really any going back if you mess it up.
So, if you like to use sub 1.7 ohm coils you really might want to try 1/16".
It *really* helps.
Once I drilled it out, I noticed when I looked into the hole that I now could see the lip of the well blocking my new hole a bit. I had filed the area out that was in the way, but thanks to Darksidevaper (Cory) he showed me how to remove that entire lip. The lip is a ring that you can remove if you get a knife edge under it and carefully work it off.
Now there isn't an obstruction blocking the hole.
tl;dr - If you drill out the hole, remove the ring.
On to the coil. I use cotton yarn for my wick and it works fine. $4 at the W store for a crazy amount of it. It's safe and there isn't any risk of microscopic fibers lodging in your lungs as with silica.
I rebuild my coils once or twice a week. Once is all that I feel is necessary but there's nothing like that new coil taste
.
The best tip I ever got was to use twisted wire for my coil. This is where you take two lengths of your normal wire, in this case, 32 AWG nichrome and twist them together, increasing the size and thus lowering resistance.
This means you can give yourself more coils that are heating and vaporizing the liquid for the same cost in OHMs.
For instance, the coils I was making @ 1.5 ohms were somewhere in the 4 coils area.
A 1.5 ohm twisted coil made from 32awg would have something like 8-10 wraps which is a hell of a lot of contact and way more vapor.
A 1.0 ohm twisted coil @ 32awg has around 4 wraps.
I know you can get 28awg and lower wire. I don't know what awg I'm actually creating by twisting them though. It isn't double the size because the wires twist like this -/-/-/-/-/-/-. I would guess that it's in the 24 awg area but I'm clearly not sure.
Moving on...
I build the coils by wrapping around a small nail or 16awg wire aligning both ends of the coil pointing the same way and not opposing directions.
Like so
**tip**
When you cut the ends of the coil cut one longer. It makes it a LOT easier than having them the same length and trying to get them both in simultaneously. Put the long one in, bend it and you can work on the short one.
Pull the nail out and then get the wick. Cut it twice the length you want it and fold it over onto itself .
Get a piece of wire (scrap) and loop it through the loop in the wick and twist it into one wire so if you were to lay out the wick straight, you would have a little wire at the middle of the wick perpendicular to it.
Grab the little wire and pull the doubled thickness of wick through the coil until the coil gets to the middle.
Cut the wick and wire loop off the end and you're done.
When you look at the top of the phoenix you'll notice that the poles aren't set exactly in the middle of the thing. They are offset to one side slightly. Instead of having two half circles you have a larger and smaller half circle.
The coil goes entirely on the large half circle side and the ends of the wire go through to the other side.
This puts the entire coil on the side with the hole. The hole is offset to the right a bit but that's ok.
The last tip I have is to bend the ends of the coil where you want the wire to go into the poles. Bend them at a 90 angle up so that when you put the wire through, the coil sits at about even with the screw heads or a little lower.
The idea is to get the coil up a bit so that air get get under and around the coil.
I found that I would put the coil in and it was pretty much blocking any air from moving below it and I was bending the coil up to get that gap.
Now I just make the coil like so:
to alleviate that issue.
That picture's scale is way, way off so keep that in mind.
And remember that when you make a coil, one end will be on one side and the other end, on the other if you look at it from this perspective. This is only true when both ends go the same direction.
Lastly, the wick and how it's routed.
You should have two wicks running through the coil.
The two closest to the bottom, are cut shorter than the two closer to the top of the coil.
These I stuff under the coil, on the big side and push them to the left and the right as to not obscure the gap below the coil.
The other two go around the poles and into the small side, again pushed to the left and right to ensure the airspace and gap under the coil is ok.
In a nutshell:
*Drill out hole to 1/16"
*Remove ring on the well
*Twisted wire coil !!!
*Wrap coil with both ends on same side
*Pull wick through coil with wire
*Put coil on big side
*Short ends of wick go on big side, longer ends go on small side.
Some of this bears repeating and some of it you already know.
This is a lot longer than I thought it would be but if it helps someone, it will be worth it.
The twisted wire coil is, imho, the most important as it gives you double the coils for the same OHMs.
Enjoy!
-cowbite
PS. Here's a ruler for reference....it's handy!
Firstly, and feel free to correct me if you've experienced something to the contrary.
The size of the air inlet hole is proportional to the amount of vapor your coil makes. What I mean is when I got the Phoenix, it came with a very, very small, long coil made from very thin (high gauge) wire. The hole seemed reasonable and I didn't notice it being particularly airy or tight. Only when I started getting into really low resistance coils, did I feel like the draw was tightening up.
It was.
The more dense the vapor, the harder it is to pull.
I drilled out the hole to 1/16" when I started using < (less than) 1.7 ohm coils.
Now I'm using 0.9 to 1.1 ohm coils and when they are in perfect form, the draw tightens up again.
I don't think I would go to 5/64" although that's not a great jump in size I could probably pull it off but there isn't really any going back if you mess it up.
So, if you like to use sub 1.7 ohm coils you really might want to try 1/16".
It *really* helps.
Once I drilled it out, I noticed when I looked into the hole that I now could see the lip of the well blocking my new hole a bit. I had filed the area out that was in the way, but thanks to Darksidevaper (Cory) he showed me how to remove that entire lip. The lip is a ring that you can remove if you get a knife edge under it and carefully work it off.
Now there isn't an obstruction blocking the hole.
tl;dr - If you drill out the hole, remove the ring.
On to the coil. I use cotton yarn for my wick and it works fine. $4 at the W store for a crazy amount of it. It's safe and there isn't any risk of microscopic fibers lodging in your lungs as with silica.
I rebuild my coils once or twice a week. Once is all that I feel is necessary but there's nothing like that new coil taste
.The best tip I ever got was to use twisted wire for my coil. This is where you take two lengths of your normal wire, in this case, 32 AWG nichrome and twist them together, increasing the size and thus lowering resistance.
This means you can give yourself more coils that are heating and vaporizing the liquid for the same cost in OHMs.
For instance, the coils I was making @ 1.5 ohms were somewhere in the 4 coils area.
A 1.5 ohm twisted coil made from 32awg would have something like 8-10 wraps which is a hell of a lot of contact and way more vapor.
A 1.0 ohm twisted coil @ 32awg has around 4 wraps.
I know you can get 28awg and lower wire. I don't know what awg I'm actually creating by twisting them though. It isn't double the size because the wires twist like this -/-/-/-/-/-/-. I would guess that it's in the 24 awg area but I'm clearly not sure.
Moving on...
I build the coils by wrapping around a small nail or 16awg wire aligning both ends of the coil pointing the same way and not opposing directions.
Like so
**tip**
When you cut the ends of the coil cut one longer. It makes it a LOT easier than having them the same length and trying to get them both in simultaneously. Put the long one in, bend it and you can work on the short one.
Pull the nail out and then get the wick. Cut it twice the length you want it and fold it over onto itself .
Get a piece of wire (scrap) and loop it through the loop in the wick and twist it into one wire so if you were to lay out the wick straight, you would have a little wire at the middle of the wick perpendicular to it.
Grab the little wire and pull the doubled thickness of wick through the coil until the coil gets to the middle.
Cut the wick and wire loop off the end and you're done.
When you look at the top of the phoenix you'll notice that the poles aren't set exactly in the middle of the thing. They are offset to one side slightly. Instead of having two half circles you have a larger and smaller half circle.
The coil goes entirely on the large half circle side and the ends of the wire go through to the other side.
This puts the entire coil on the side with the hole. The hole is offset to the right a bit but that's ok.
The last tip I have is to bend the ends of the coil where you want the wire to go into the poles. Bend them at a 90 angle up so that when you put the wire through, the coil sits at about even with the screw heads or a little lower.
The idea is to get the coil up a bit so that air get get under and around the coil.
I found that I would put the coil in and it was pretty much blocking any air from moving below it and I was bending the coil up to get that gap.
Now I just make the coil like so:
to alleviate that issue.
That picture's scale is way, way off so keep that in mind.
And remember that when you make a coil, one end will be on one side and the other end, on the other if you look at it from this perspective. This is only true when both ends go the same direction.
Lastly, the wick and how it's routed.
You should have two wicks running through the coil.
The two closest to the bottom, are cut shorter than the two closer to the top of the coil.
These I stuff under the coil, on the big side and push them to the left and the right as to not obscure the gap below the coil.
The other two go around the poles and into the small side, again pushed to the left and right to ensure the airspace and gap under the coil is ok.
In a nutshell:
*Drill out hole to 1/16"
*Remove ring on the well
*Twisted wire coil !!!
*Wrap coil with both ends on same side
*Pull wick through coil with wire
*Put coil on big side
*Short ends of wick go on big side, longer ends go on small side.
Some of this bears repeating and some of it you already know.
This is a lot longer than I thought it would be but if it helps someone, it will be worth it.
The twisted wire coil is, imho, the most important as it gives you double the coils for the same OHMs.
Enjoy!
-cowbite
PS. Here's a ruler for reference....it's handy!
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