Silica wick VS Cotton

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Dissonance

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Cotton is cheaper and a bit easier to work with, but tricker to master (Gotta get the exact right amount of cotton). It's generally easier to wrap coils, since you can use a drill bit to get perfect coils then pull your cotton through versus having to try to wrap it around the cotton.
Silica is a bit more expensive, and you gotta wrap the coil around the silica which can take some practice (Not too loose, not too tight). Silica can also be dry burned, so you won't actually burn the silica if you fire the coil without a juiced wick. This means you can probably get longer life from the silica, just dry burn all the gunk off every few tanks and don't gotta mess with re-wicking anything.

Overall, I'd recommend cotton. Just seems to give better flavor/vapor, and better wicking once you get the hang of it. You might even wanna look into cellucotton (rayon) or Japanese cotton pads (such as ken goh do). I've also heard good things about peaches n' cream yarn (100% cotton, can buy it at walmart), but I haven't used any of those 3. Regular organic cotton balls do the trick for me :)
 

Weizenheimer

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silica is very easy to work with off the bat, but wrapping microcoils and wicking with cotton doesn't take long to get good enough at either. You might detect differences in flavor and density etc. Microcoils with cotton are easy to clean. Just pull the cotton out and fire the coil to burn it mostly clean. You can also (carefully) run water over it while firing it to get it really clean. It is all kinda subjective though. Might as well try both.
 

stvan1

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Fastech works fine maybe boil first, cheap and easy and you can pull wicks out and use cotton. Also available on ebay. When you start using stainless mesh for Genesis attys I have not seen them prebuilt. May be our there though. My biggest challenge is putting coils through the little tiny holes. I am old and eyesight is gone and hands tremble, but I manage.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
 

TamiPac

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Ditto everything you said! Organic cotton balls are amazing and I don't care for the taste of silica but it's a personal choice just like juice.
Cotton is cheaper and a bit easier to work with, but tricker to master (Gotta get the exact right amount of cotton). It's generally easier to wrap coils, since you can use a drill bit to get perfect coils then pull your cotton through versus having to try to wrap it around the cotton.
Silica is a bit more expensive, and you gotta wrap the coil around the silica which can take some practice (Not too loose, not too tight). Silica can also be dry burned, so you won't actually burn the silica if you fire the coil without a juiced wick. This means you can probably get longer life from the silica, just dry burn all the gunk off every few tanks and don't gotta mess with re-wicking anything.

Overall, I'd recommend cotton. Just seems to give better flavor/vapor, and better wicking once you get the hang of it. You might even wanna look into cellucotton (rayon) or Japanese cotton pads (such as ken goh do). I've also heard good things about peaches n' cream yarn (100% cotton, can buy it at walmart), but I haven't used any of those 3. Regular organic cotton balls do the trick for me :)
 

DingerCPA

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For kicks and grins, I got a FT batch of EVOD (clones) just to have a bunch of spare tanks (and to keep a set at work.) I ripped all the coils and wicks out and built my own. I use organic cotton, and for me is just fine. I ripped the pre-installed coil from my kayfun clone from FT and washed the whole kit and kaboodle and built my own. Their resistances were about 2.2-2.4; I like about 1.8-1.9 on my heads.

The convenience of silica to dryburn is a nice gig, but the 3 minutes to rip the head apart, grab a tuft of cotton, dry burn, spin and load is o.k. for me :)
 

USRN2016

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I've decided to buy a MVP and a RBA and was wondering what the pros and cons of silica vs cotton are.
also are Fast Techs prebuilt coils and wicks worth buying or should I just wrap my own?

I have bought FT pre built coils w/ wicks, save your money and build your own. You get to dial in your coils to your preferences. Experimenting (IMHO) with coil building is fun.
 

USRN2016

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If I were to get cotton like that from walmart I would have to boil it a crap ton wont I?

Organic NON Bleached cotton. Everyone has their brand preference. Some cotton gives a "cotton flavor" you have to get past. It will fade, but some cotton doesn't do that at all.
 

Wow1420

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I've decided to buy a MVP and a RBA and was wondering what the pros and cons of silica vs cotton are.
also are Fast Techs prebuilt coils and wicks worth buying or should I just wrap my own?

I find the premade coils from FT worthwhile for Kanger heads because of the no-resistance legs. Although I now would get the ones without wick and put in my own cotton or rayon.

For RBAs, there's no need for the pre built ones.
 

Sue1971

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Hi all, I'm fairly new at building coils, although I like the ease of making my coil on my little itty bitty screwdriver and wicking with cotton, (I can do it all in under about 5 min. However I decided to build a couple coils with 3mm silica wick and wraping the wire around the silica with a sewing needle for support. (32gauge wire) I find I am getting better flavor of my juice with the silica vs the cotton.

Any reason why this would be? Is it just in my head...lol or is there some truth to it, I know I've read all over the place that cotton gives juice a better flavor.

I use the atty's that go with pt2 and evods for builds.
 

CloudPusher

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I like cotton too. But for my sub ohm builds, I find that ekowool works great. It wick's awesome and i dont have to worry about burning the wick like cotton can do. I just vape till it starts to tast burnt and then drip more directly into my wide boar driptip. It's the thickest ekowool you can get(4mm). It does last longer But cost's more.
 
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CloudPusher

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May 28, 2014
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DeFunik Springs, FL, USA
Hi all, I'm fairly new at building coils, although I like the ease of making my coil on my little itty bitty screwdriver and wicking with cotton, (I can do it all in under about 5 min. However I decided to build a couple coils with 3mm silica wick and wraping the wire around the silica with a sewing needle for support. (32gauge wire) I find I am getting better flavor of my juice with the silica vs the cotton.

Any reason why this would be? Is it just in my head...lol or is there some truth to it, I know I've read all over the place that cotton gives juice a better flavor.

I use the atty's that go with pt2 and evods for builds.

Well i don't know. Maybe it is just in your head, hehe. If it work's better for you then keep using it:)
 

screwball

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I have bought FT pre built coils w/ wicks, save your money and build your own. You get to dial in your coils to your preferences. Experimenting (IMHO) with coil building is fun.

I'm definitely looking forward to wrapping my own coils and experimenting since I'm a tinkerer but I was thinking of buying a 50 pck since they are dirt cheap just as a starting point. I have plans to buy 50ft of kanthal wire and a bunch of silica and cotton and toying with them both since its all fairly cheap in the long run.

Also I was considering buying a dripping atomizer a bit further down the line when I'm used to wrapping coils, for that I probably should be using cotton over silica correct?
 
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