I've posted this elsewhere, I'll post it again here, because it just plain works!
Using this method
mostly eliminates all the headaches associated with thinner gauge nickel (still have to worry about cutting the legs with your terminal screws, but even that's not a big deal).
I only use 30 and 32ga annealed now, since it tends to work much better on a DNA, giving me higher resistance and a larger margin for error if resistance shifts and less coil mass/faster heating compared to 28ga or twisted 30ga which most folks use, since 30 and 32 is normally such a pain to work with.
Keep in mind, at least with the DNA40,
more resistance is actually
better in my experience, and the only reason you see something like 0.10 to 0.15 as the "standard" for nickel builds is that's just what happens when you have a spaced coil made out of 28ga that will still fit in most build decks.
Instead of nail like the Youtube guy uses, I cut a ~2mm stainless bbq/kebab skewer.
I cut it in three sections, each about the same length as the JOC pads I use, (running along the grain). I run about a wrap and a half of JOC around it, then twist to tighten into a nice tube that holds its shape, while making sure the skewer arbor still slides easily. Play around with cotton thickness to dial in the ID of the coil you want to run (or use a thicker/thinner arbor)
What I like about the skewer is that the loop on the end is handy for gripping, and it's stainless so less worry about contaminating my cotton. Since I have three pieces, what I do is pre-build coils on the section with the loop, then slide them onto the all-straight sections, which I keep in a baggy in my "vape kit" so I always have a couple prebuilt nickel coils and wicks ready to go, at home or on the road.
And that's the downside, you're not going to be able to simply rewick with this method, you'll need a full coil build too, but that's ok with me since Ni200 and cotton are both cheap and it only takes a couple minutes to build one of these. Each wick/coil combo uses about a quarter pad of the 5x6mm stuff I use, but once again, cotton is cheap.
Wicks
great in my Kayfun V4, my ST, my Erl clone, and all my drippers. You'll want to experiment with how thick you want to wrap your cotton on the arbor, and then just trim and fit as you would any other wick for your particular atty. I should mention on some toppers I get better results peeling the outer layers off the pad instead of pulling one in half and keeping a compressed layer, on others the compressed layer seems to help.
Try it, you'll like it.
