Quick check in before running out to PO, Banks, UPS store, Costco (first so I can get the UPS guys their cookies). I built my first wick using cotton cooking twine; like you use to tie fowl legs together before roasting/baking. Used suggestions from several REOnauts. I was pretty concerned about using cotton as my juice requires a dry-burn daily because of char build-up. Karen, and probably others, said that it would be easy to pull cotton wick out daily, dry burn coil, and then reinsert new wick. I'll go into more detail later, maybe with pics. I'm really liking it. Using 1.4 ohm, 30 kanthal, 5 winds around round toothpick, wick about 3mm after boiling/air drying, on Silver Grand. Pulled through using bent piece of 32 kanthal. The 30 ga Kanthal did become pretty brittle after tempering it, with kitchen torch, before making coil. I was going to do a quick build with silica 3 or 2.5mm. I torched it first and it fell apart with many shards of silica blowing off (ceiling fans). Even without putting it under the dissecting microscope, we keep in kitchen, I could see with my be-speckled old eyes that I didn't want to put that stuff into my lungs as much as I've been doing. The silica basically fell apart after torching. BTW... I built this for ERA that has about the tiniest posts and holes and very narrow space between posts. The magnifying hood helped immensely. I have a very nice one but can't find it so I ordered a cheap one from Amazon; <$10. This is the first time I've used hood to build wicks. Makes it so much easier!!!!
Off and running. Hope all are well or getting better.
Hugs, Feisty Alice