Solid vs hollow SS wicks?

[EDO]

when the wick is rolled the larger grain will run from top to bottom. the two wicks i have now are rolled like this. a semitight 500 pretty solid but a tiny hole up the center, with no oxidation other then the charring from the coil and it seems i can chainvape the tank dry as fast as i can take drags off the atty with no tilting.

last night i was sitting here doing like 5 things at once , reading pm's the classies, a couple websites, playing with my new mod etc. vaping away and got this wicked dry hit and thought oh man what happened to my wick. looked at the tank and there was like 2 mm of fluid left in the bottom, i chained the thing almost dry.

like stated YMMV and I use 70/30 ish very clear ry4, i do not know the results on a thicker or darker juice.

Ok thanks...just wasn't sure what you meant before.

 

[scrappy]

I only use dripping rba's, but here's my experience. I only roll thin wicks and I don't really oxidize it. Just enough for it to glow for a second, then it's done. For me, thick dense wicks didn't work as well. I also make sure it's hollow. Like stated above, the coil has to be loose enough to slide the wick in and out. What I've found is with dense or solid wicks is when I start getting dry hits and look in the well there's always juice left over. With thin hollow wicks I get every last drop. I've tried several times to wipe around the well with a paper towel and I don't get anything on the towel. Btw, I don't mean thin, as in skinny. I mean thin as in I don't use a lot of mesh. It's still a decent diameter. I use just enough that it's not flimsy. If I had to guess I'd say I cut it no more than a 1/4 of an inch wide, maybe even less than that. I've never measure it, I just eyeball it.

What I've found with oxidizing my wicks a lot is they become brittle and don't last as long. They also don't seem to wick as well for me.

 

[varivapr]

I recently saw a video on youtube about a double wick and have since been using it with great results. It is a small wick rolled with a tiny hole and oxidized separately and then slide inside another bigger oxidized wick. I don't know exactly what it's doing but it does work great. I'm a tilter anyway but I have never run it dry even during a serious chain vape session. If anyone is really interested I will find the video and post.

I know I have better results with wicks using a lot of material (thicker wicks). Thin walled hollow wicks always run dry on me when chain vaping. I only roll thick walled wicks. I don't use anything to roll around (paperclip) but they usually end up with a small hole through them.

 

[JuniorNA]

i hand roll but start with a paper clip,but by the time i'm done tightening, it's probably mostly solid.
i'm using 500 SS mess and for me, it wicks great with my method. 500 works great with VG and PG.
oh and I only oxidize - where the coil is touching. So i do 1 burn, quench, burn , then juice burn, and thats it.

 

[Chriskarr]

I hand-roll with no paperclip. First I cut the mesh to size (no dimensions known, since I've drilled out my wick hole and just eyeball the cut). I make a rectangle and then trim what will be the outside of the wick - at a 45 degree angle - down at about the 1/4 length mark so that I'll see a spiral on the bottom of the finished wick. I always go with the visible grain in my mesh on the initial cut; never had/knew a reason, except that it makes sense to do my major cuts with a guide-line. I then fold over the part of the wick that's going to be touching the coil about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch along the whole wick. I then begin to roll without a paperclip or anything for support. After I'm done rolling it I give it a firm roll until it will fit in the wick hole *almost* snugly. After this I typically do a juice burn with a torch twice, while quenching with the juice I'll be burning off the following burn. In the end I quench with water.

I insert my wick, wind my coil, spend a couple minutes adjusting my coil and doing the initial burn-in of my coil and then I can vape for over a week on the one wick. Usually my wicks last long enough to replace the coil thrice, but I have a bad habit of dry-burning on an empty tank to improve vapor quality and quantity.

The reason I do the second cut (at a 45 degree angle to the finished wick) is to make it so that many outer layers of the wick are contacting the juice. I find it works better than the Scubabatdan method of cutting the bottom of the wick at an angle after rolling. Just what I've noticed on my DID clone.