Tight Coil vs Loose Coil - Benefits and Drawbacks

[Rsunderl]

I'm somewhat new to vaping, and have gotten to the point of making my own coils for a great Immortalizer clone.

Yes, I am very familiar with ohm's law, have the equipment to measure my resistance, am using Efest IMR 18650 2500 mAh batteries rated at 35A (likely the peak rating) on a Sigelei 20, usually set between 9 and 11 watts. My coils are as close to 2 ohms as I can get them, but never lower than 1.7 (and I know to subtract the internal resistance of my DMM from the reading. I also test the coil again once mounted in the atty before attaching the atty to the Sigelei. Once tested, I dry fire without a wick to ensure that the coils glow from the center outward, and then wick with Japanese cotton.

The coils I make are all tightly wound, meaning that the each coils is right up against the next. I make them that way because that's the way I see them made in most of the instructional videos.

However, I have also purchased some pre-wound NR-R-NR 1.8 ohm coils from FT for having while travelling and/or when I'm too lazy to make a new coil . I re-wick these coils with Japanese (Koh Gen Do) cotton, because I prefer that to the silica wicks that come with the pre-made coils.

When trying these coils in the above setup using the same juice as when using the tight coils, I don't really notice a significant difference in flavor, vapor or TH.

Now for my question. What are the relative benefits and drawbacks of winding your coils loosely vs winding them tightly, and when is each type recommended - especially in regard to flavor, vapor and TH?

 

[Xaiver]

From my experience, the major difference doesn't come into play unless you're heavily chain vaping with a wick that's not as good at wicking.

I use silica wick because that's what I started on and it has worked well for me. My favorite thing about the silica is that I can just wrap the coil around the wick, without needing to do the wicking separately from the coil making. It makes a nice comfortable fit without going too tight or too loose as far as distance from the wick goes....and I don't like adjusting the coil after it's built much...I've had problems with that in the past.

Anyhow, with a tight coil (in regards to distance between the wires) on silica, if you're chain vaping or using higher wattages, it can start to dry out toward the center fairly quickly.

The other idea is that the closer together they are, the more wraps you can fit into a smaller space, if that's your thing.

 

[Stosh]

I agree with Xaiver, the biggest difference I've found is a nice tight coil looks prettier when you dry burn it to clean. And as was mentioned you can fit more coils in a smaller space.

Vape wise I have seen little difference from the coil spacing, wicking with silica, ecowook, cotton of various sorts, stainless steel mesh, all produce vapor and flavor.