Wick experiment

[MortenOen]

Morton, I watched your second video and I like the results, but not to suprised. For one, when you stated as much as possible, I imagined you twisting the cotton completely into a twisted thin rod, then untwisting once in coil...we use to do this year's ago, but now, people just twist the very tip and thread thru. If one doesn't completely twist the cotton, and just thread it through with maybe just holding the coil, I agree, you probably cannot overstuff coil....except for the last 2 test strips you had, I would of never thought people would use such tiny amounts of cotton thru a 3.5mm coil, especially at those wattages, and am not surprised that those particular people are getting much better results....I don't vape drippers and even cotton, so am not familiar with whatever the norm is, but it does seem that there was perhaps a trend in the last couple years to not twist and go really loose, and if so, I definitely agree on your results. ..when I use to use cotton, I believe I was cutting a 7mm strip of ... cotton for a 2 or 2.5 mm coil , while trimming tails slightly and never had issues.....
Question, when you inserted the thickest test piece in your coil, did you twist and roll with your fingers, so it was a dense rod before threading through and then straighten it out after? I ask because I once tested a few wicks and by far, the dry hits came from coils that had not enough, rather then to much, it wasn't until I twisted and rolled a massive piece dense piece, that I was able to get a dry hit.....as said before, there is another factor in rta's, and that is the channels, where in some, you cannot use to much, at least in there....

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Hi,
Yeah, Im starting to see the misunderstandings now. I have never twisted a wick in my life I can sit and twist just the tip for 5 minutes, just to get it through, but the twisted tip gets cut off. So, I don't manipulate the fibres in any way now. That is a recipe for disaster, which my experiment the last days has proven again and again, with one exception. If your coils are very high above the well, like 20mm or more, then, and only then should you squeez or roll the wicking material somewhat together. But below that, just leave it in peace, or un-disturbed, but you should still get as much as possible into the coil itself, at least for drippers.
Now, I get a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and I am starting to hear that even RTA users have great results by wicking harder, but I have no idea what they used to do. Getting 7mm strip into a 2,5mm coil sounds about perfect according to my testing, as long as you dont twist or manipulate the tails or ends.
And as I say in the video, the worst case of spattering is the "little harder" than normal wicking. There is a threshold for severe spattering about twice the diameter of the coil (with muji pads). 3x or a little more seemes to be the right amount.

 

[Ryedan]

Now, I get a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and I am starting to hear that even RTA users have great results by wicking harder, but I have no idea what they used to do. Getting 7mm strip into a 2,5mm coil sounds about perfect according to my testing, as long as you dont twist or manipulate the tails or ends.

Thank you Morten for your work on all this stuff. IMO there has not been enough of this done with vaping yet

I am a RTA user and I have also found that stuffing more cotton than most people probably would into a coil is better for my vape experience, but too much is also a negative. It is more complicated than that though, in that the amount of wick in the coil is one aspect to consider, the size and shape of the wick tails, atty geometry and the power you're running are also factors. I currently use both KGD and Rayon which are quite different in how they perform and how they need to be set up in atties. All of these variables makes it hard to quantify how to wick something, but good generalities are better than nothing

Kudos for the work you're doing on this, I really appreciate it. There can never be too much data

 

[Caterpiller]

Hi @MortenOen

I have now tried a few new RDA builds using significantly more cotton than I am used to.

Previously I have been putting the cotton in so that it has just a little resistance from the coil. In my latest builds I really stuffed a lot more cotton in.

The results are interesting. I'm finding my TC builds don't reach the same high power limit on the first couple of draws, which is strange I expected better wicking to mean more power delivery in TC.

But then the power for the next eight to ten draws stays consistent, rather than dropping off significantly draw after draw.

I put this down to better wicking and better efficiency - the loose cotton was giving up all its juice immediately but failing to get fully saturated in subsequent draws, while the tighter cotton seems more balanced.

The second thing I noticed is a significant drop in flavour, but I now suspect this is due to less coil spitting - after all a spitting coil, while not ideal, does provide lots of flavour.

I'm satisfied that you are onto something here and will keep using more cotton - eventually my taste buds should get used to the lack of actual juice drops in my mouth.

Keep up the good work.

 

[MortenOen]

Hi @MortenOen

I have now tried a few new RDA builds using significantly more cotton than I am used to.

Previously I have been putting the cotton in so that it has just a little resistance from the coil. In my latest builds I really stuffed a lot more cotton in.

The results are interesting. I'm finding my TC builds don't reach the same high power limit on the first couple of draws, which is strange I expected better wicking to mean more power delivery in TC.

But then the power for the next eight to ten draws stays consistent, rather than dropping off significantly draw after draw.

I put this down to better wicking and better efficiency - the loose cotton was giving up all its juice immediately but failing to get fully saturated in subsequent draws, while the tighter cotton seems more balanced.

The second thing I noticed is a significant drop in flavour, but I now suspect this is due to less coil spitting - after all a spitting coil, while not ideal, does provide lots of flavour.

I'm satisfied that you are onto something here and will keep using more cotton - eventually my taste buds should get used to the lack of actual juice drops in my mouth.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for this report! Very detailed and analytic. I have one sugestion for you; Place your coils right in the straight path of the air flow (and watch my tutorials on this subject if you have not allready). Then you will get the high notes back in the flavor, and without spatter. I had the same problem, but fixed it after watching air flow in a scaled up "RDA".