Ha ha...no Mac, did not think that you were dissin' me at all. You've been very generous and informative to any questions posed of you.
Thanks, I appreciate the ack. Makes it worthwhile when someone benefits.
I built an 8/7 30 gauge wrap today around the 1/16" bit and followed your directions to the 'T', including the quenching. And absolutely YES, I do remember those film cans and went through many of them with my AE-1.
Ah, the A-1 w/motor drive, sweet, and two similar AE-1's black with Canon top-tier multicoated lenses. I loved them well. Now
that was an expensive hobby! I had accounts with three labs. Then came video and I was doomed. But I depart.
My coil looked beautiful and came out to about 1.8 ohms and at that point I thought that I was ahead of the game. However, this time I put in a flavor wick on top of the coil and and the draw was super stiff and I was not getting enough air. At that point I got disgusted and ripped the whole thing apart, but in retrospect I probably should have played around with it some...maybe shorten or remove the flavor wick or move the plastic collar up...I don't know.
But anyways, I'm a lot more confident and comfortable with the microcoil winding process now. I just need to take some time and learn to understand the ProTank better...and hopefully, the next time that I give it a try I will have more patience.
You're in the pipeline! I was rash often myself. I've had a devil of a time with top wicks. Interesting thing I found. Most 1mm silica sucks! I had more of those top wicks ruin good builds in hours because the quality was so bad. Many vendors from all over. The stuff's foul. I started using small diameter Ekowool instead. Expensive but worked. Less flooding too. Much less fouling and clogging as the stupid top wicks stopped fraying into the coil cup stopping air flow! It needs to stay in place and not shred. If the wick meets that criteria, it's a real wick. Why they keep passing off this stuff I do not know. Some chinaman General must have a lock on that part of the guv'ment cartel.
Now Ekowool's beautiful and if washed won't offend. But it's heck to get it into what would seem to be it's appropriate diameter. And the cross-section of the media varies from vendor to vendor it seems. So it's hard to predict what you're going to have until you get it and mike it. I started with 2mm to dismal results. Lot's of flooding and chocking, clogging as I was feeding into too tight a wick. The 2mm I had was well over and although a sleeve did not compact well. Since I've had some variations that worked. I have sources marked somewhere but was essentially getting samples from everywhere until I was utterly frustrated. However, I did come out of that into some quite good results at 2mm. Even compressing the same 2mm on top. Amazing.
If you can find a 1.5 solid that feeds well into 1.75mm that might be worth a try. I have quite a bit of the stuff I set aside for RDA's and eventually I'll return to building tables for it. But that brings up another nasty subject.
Although I'd like to build for 2mm on the Protank, you can't! Not economically. You see Ekowool is relatively pricey; and…2mm doesn't drop down into the slot on the Protank. Rotten. That means it's a throwaway build. Yes, you can build in place letting the "V" hold your mandrel (screwdriver, bit, etc.)
then after you're done gently push the top wick down on it to lower both down into the slot. HOWEVER…this will induce an arc in the legs. Even with a good symmetrical installation and tight short legs you run the risk of intermittent contact and resistance error in operation. Secondly, you risk separating the two outer turns of the coil creating the very high risk of hot legs. Screwed. We just defeated the whole purpose of the build. I've tried it since 28g is awesome at 2mm. When I made that discovery I realized Rip Tripper's recommendations were excellent gamesmanship. It relegates the build to the class "cotton only". And most of us can't be replacing builds every day or two. Not practical. Sorry fans.
Consumers need simple reproducible solutions. Not ideas that are going to break the bank or require a rocket scientist with the digital dexterity of Liberaci to do a build. Two mm 28g is pretty much the formula for the latter. So, with a little luck I thought, I just as well could try to verify and document some truly practical alternatives for the rest of us.
We all can.
After all, I'm a lot older than I look...or at least I like to think so.
LOL. At my age, I'd like to think so too but I think I've gotten past pretenses. Still, I have the missies trying to swipe tugs on my vaper. S'all good.
Thanks for the nod Jelly.
Good luck!