Oops. One last thing. When doing slightly spaced coils how do you tweak them?
With the "touching" coils I've been tweaking them by squeezing together so they heat evenly from inside out (don't know why it's just what everybody does).
When adjusting slightly spaced coils since I don't want to squeeze them together and make them touching coils what should I look for in terms of how they lite/heat up and what if anything should I do to adjust/tweak them ?
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For me, it's all in the wrapping. I use the same ordinary old drill bit for both types. For non-spaced I wrap the wire so the wraps are touching, nice and tight. (Using 28 or 26 gauge, btw) It always springs out a little bit when the tension is released, and that's fine. Install, fire, pinch firmly, repeat until it's heating evenly from the center out, and by the time that process is finished the wraps are all touching again.
For spaced I wrap around the drill bit with less tension, and (obviously) space out each wrap. I try to keep the spacing as even as possible, but don't sweat it if they're not perfect (and they're never perfect straight off the drill bit). Then I install, fire, and pinch, but this time
lightly, until I get a nice even glow. During the heating/tempering process, the spacing tends to even out on its own, as long as I wrapped it fairly neatly. The trick with spaced is to pinch lightly...just little nudges with the pliers is enough. You don't want to compress the coil till the wraps touch; just pinch lightly and it should temper itself into a nice evenly-spaced coil.
If, after all that there are noticeable discrepancies in the spacing, I use my smallest flat head screwdriver to poke-prod-pinch until it's all evened up.
In terms of what to look for re even heating with spaced coils, it's the same as with touching; nice even glow from the center. Really, the tweaking is the easy part. I've yet to wrap a coil that couldn't be quickly tweaked to burn evenly, and I've wrapped some monstrosities in my time.
