Sub-ohm vets, silica wick? or no?

[treehead]

Hey guys I've been having great experience with some pretty low ohm's, it seems like .35 ohms is about as low as I'll go at least with cotton. I love me some cotton for flavor especially, but I don't know if it's got it beat in the wicking or not. Besides that I know silica is waaay more tolerant to heat, and that just seems more my style, again cotton is cheap and awesome but I don't like the risk of getting a lungful of burnt cotton that can incinerate in a matter of seconds, as opposed to minutes with silica.

-So is silica better for sub-ohming?

 

[Devilok]

I much prefer cotton over silica for sub ohm'ing myself..used to use silica for the longest time until I switched to cotton, now all I use is cotton.

 

[supertrunker]

it depends on the coils you make. Cotton wicks fastest, but dies fastest too - it's common for people using cotton to change wicks daily with subΩ builds. You might also look at things for wick like bamboo. (cue Panda mates with Trunker jokes)

I use low gauge wire and silica wick and change the wick once a week. The coils last longer and get dry burned clean at every rewick - just the same as cotton.

Just make sure you retest the Ohms of your entire atty every time you rewick it, because it's good practice!

In my opinion it's a coin toss - do you like the lifespan of silica over the fast wicking and flavour of cotton? I'm lazy!

T

 

[dice57]

Using hemp fiber for all my builds down to .3 ohms. Next on the list is Ramie fiber. Lot more life with Hemp than cotton, wicks better and more heat tolerant.

 

[t8kiteasy]

For me ceramic rope,and Silica are my preferred wicks but ceramic rope has silica beat for me as far as flavor and wicking.

I have my Russian 91% wicked with 3mm silica doubled over and twisted 30g wire build is at .6
I also have my Taifun GT wicked with ceramic rope single cut strand with twisted .5 x .1 ribbon wire build is also at .6
The flavor from the R91% is better than the Taifun and it is a more saturated vape.I usually build with ribbon over regular kanthal but for this it seems that round kanthal has ribbon beat.I also thought that the Taifun would give a better vape but the flavor,TH,are almost non existant with this type of build in it.

 

[UncleChuck]

Personally I feel cotton wicks the best. With cotton I can have a little puddle of liquid on the deck, wick tails just resting on the deck, and I can fire continuously with the cap off watching that puddle of juice disappear as it's getting sucked up by the cotton and vaped away.

I've tried German silica, Russian Ekowool, tons of random sillicas from various sites, and none of them would wick as well as cotton. When firing with the cap off, the silica right around the coil would start getting dry and eventually dry to the point of glowing coils, while there was still plenty of juice left on the deck, or in the wick tails. If left alone for 10 seconds or so the silica would finally get juicy at the coil again enough for a full vape, but if I were to chain vape high powered coil I would always get burnt dry hits after a few good lung pulls.

It's no contest from what I've seen, cotton will just wick continuously until the juice is gone, where as silica will dry out quicker and then need time to re-distribute juice along the entire length of the wick before being wet enough to vape again.

This slower wicking wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue with low power builds, or for people that take a break between hits, but for high powered chain vaping silica just can't keep up as well as cotton.

I've also found how long the cotton lasts has more to do with how wet you keep your wicks, not the power you are running. Although running high powered coils will probably make it more likely to dry out your wicks. But regardless of power, constantly running cotton wicks dry will cause them to need replacing sooner than if you drip frequently and keep them well juiced.

This became even more apparent with the Magma, my cotton wicks in it have been lasting forever, which I'm assuming is because the large juice tank/well keeps the wicks nice and juicy at all times. .3 ohm, it's had at least 10ml of juice through it since I recoiled it, and the wicks are still plump and clean

The heat tolerance of silica is nice, but unless you're a completely oblivious vaper, you are going to feel your cotton going dry long before it bursts into flames. With cotton I usually notice a steep drop off in flavor and vapor, followed by some unsavory off-flavors of overheated juice, but in all my drunken stupidity I've never managed to suck on cotton smoke, although I guess YMMV

 

[BigCloudz]

Since switching to organic cotton, I couldn't imagine using silica or ekowool. The flavor, cost, and ease of use is in the favor of cotton by a landslide IMHO.

 

[BigCloudz]

it depends on the coils you make. Cotton wicks fastest, but dies fastest too - it's common for people using cotton to change wicks daily with subΩ builds. You might also look at things for wick like bamboo. (cue Panda mates with Trunker jokes)

I use low gauge wire and silica wick and change the wick once a week. The coils last longer and get dry burned clean at every rewick - just the same as cotton.

Just make sure you retest the Ohms of your entire atty every time you rewick it, because it's good practice!

In my opinion it's a coin toss - do you like the lifespan of silica over the fast wicking and flavour of cotton? I'm lazy!

T

For me, the re-wicking daily isn't because the cotton is shot, it's the gunk/oxidation on the coils that need to be dry burned and brushed off. The cotton is actually in decent shape, it's the coils that get so gunked up which creates the change in flavor (in a bad way) and VD.

 

[folkphys]

Ceramic rope. Just did a 0.5Ohm with parallel 28g. The XC-116 is chucking out delectable supertootiness.

 

[KAI789]

I prefer cotton for flavour and vheapness. It was just a pain for me to. Thread silica through.

 

[Ding]

Well I started off with cotton but it bacame a hassel to use cotton.Ran between .07-.09 on my coils ohms but went with silica.It last longer and can't tell the flavor difference,that is if ya fire the silica and coils before juicing.I use a torch on the silica before threading them and torch and pulse the coils before and after setting them in the unit,just to make sure there is no shorts and clean em.FWIW I get a longer time with silica than cotton plus cotton burns if it gets dry and ya have to clean everything.

 

[treehead]

it depends on the coils you make. Cotton wicks fastest, but dies fastest too - it's common for people using cotton to change wicks daily with subΩ builds. You might also look at things for wick like bamboo. (cue Panda mates with Trunker jokes)

I use low gauge wire and silica wick and change the wick once a week. The coils last longer and get dry burned clean at every rewick - just the same as cotton.

Just make sure you retest the Ohms of your entire atty every time you rewick it, because it's good practice!

In my opinion it's a coin toss - do you like the lifespan of silica over the fast wicking and flavour of cotton? I'm lazy!

T

Good point I like the idea of bamboo, they sell aroma-sticks that "suck" scent fluid near me and it's organic too. I'm not sure if I like the idea of how hard it might be to make bamboo work in an RDA I do usually tilt my coils or even keep them vertical, but cotton is hard to beat, it sucks like Monica Lewinski. Since this post I've done some tinkering and figured out to get the coil as close as possible to the base, wick THROUGH it and push the tails underneath into a big dense cloud. I was putting the cotton underneath only in a cloud and it was letting the top of the coils burn the cotton. If I ever make nano's now I know to give it some room because it makes ALOT of heat, so much that the coil doesn't need to even touch the liquid really.

-Thanks for the input though, it looks like cotton can't be beat I never doubted it

 

[treehead]

Using hemp fiber for all my builds down to .3 ohms. Next on the list is Ramie fiber. Lot my life with Hemp than cotton, wicks better and more heat tolerant.

Jah mon, I didn't know hemp could be used but it's so obvious now that I think about it. I wonder if I can make my own hemp wick (if ya know what I'm sayin ), I could have a vape spliff!

 

[treehead]

Personally I feel cotton wicks the best. With cotton I can have a little puddle of liquid on the deck, wick tails just resting on the deck, and I can fire continuously with the cap off watching that puddle of juice disappear as it's getting sucked up by the cotton and vaped away.

I've tried German silica, Russian Ekowool, tons of random sillicas from various sites, and none of them would wick as well as cotton. When firing with the cap off, the silica right around the coil would start getting dry and eventually dry to the point of glowing coils, while there was still plenty of juice left on the deck, or in the wick tails. If left alone for 10 seconds or so the silica would finally get juicy at the coil again enough for a full vape, but if I were to chain vape high powered coil I would always get burnt dry hits after a few good lung pulls.

It's no contest from what I've seen, cotton will just wick continuously until the juice is gone, where as silica will dry out quicker and then need time to re-distribute juice along the entire length of the wick before being wet enough to vape again.

This slower wicking wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue with low power builds, or for people that take a break between hits, but for high powered chain vaping silica just can't keep up as well as cotton.

I've also found how long the cotton lasts has more to do with how wet you keep your wicks, not the power you are running. Although running high powered coils will probably make it more likely to dry out your wicks. But regardless of power, constantly running cotton wicks dry will cause them to need replacing sooner than if you drip frequently and keep them well juiced.

This became even more apparent with the Magma, my cotton wicks in it have been lasting forever, which I'm assuming is because the large juice tank/well keeps the wicks nice and juicy at all times. .3 ohm, it's had at least 10ml of juice through it since I recoiled it, and the wicks are still plump and clean

The heat tolerance of silica is nice, but unless you're a completely oblivious vaper, you are going to feel your cotton going dry long before it bursts into flames. With cotton I usually notice a steep drop off in flavor and vapor, followed by some unsavory off-flavors of overheated juice, but in all my drunken stupidity I've never managed to suck on cotton smoke, although I guess YMMV

Your totally right brother, it turns out (since I haven't been extreme sub-ohming long) I just wan't wicking right. I think I do it how you do and wick it THROUGH the coil (because I micro/nano and people say to make a cloud underneath: BULL) and then I tuck the tails underneat and I get competition clouds at 25 watts. Cotton truly can't be beat, and even if you do dry hit, it's not that bad, I can usually tell when the juice is getting low because the vapor goes away anyway. It was lack of experience/technique on my part.

 

[treehead]

Ceramic rope. Just did a 0.5Ohm with parallel 28g. The XC-116 is chucking out delectable supertootiness.

lol "supertootiness" I love that word now. That sounds like my kinda setup, I wasn't aware that ceramic rope existed though, that's good to know. I've figured out a wicking technique that's flawless now though, however I'll be sure to give that a try