Background - I'm trying a variety of cotton wick materials on Echo Crystal Vision cartomizers on a VV mod.
SS Mesh Wraps for Cotton Wicks - I'm thinking I'm going to let this go. While there are some advangages to wrapping the wicks in the coil area, I'm having more coil difficulties. It seems with heating up and cooling down there is more opportunity for the protective treatment of the SS Mesh to fail. In short, I get more erratic Ohm readings and erratic performance. I still have about a dozen Cotton over Hemp wicks made up with SS Mesh cladding and don't know if I'll use them or get rid of the cladding.
Cotton-Hemp Candle Wick - The hemp inside definitly gives the wick some body. That may be of some help in winding coils. The performance is pretty good and it seems to wick well. I'm looking forward to giving them a try without the SS Mesh cladding.
Bamboo Yarn - Yesterday I tried six strands of the somewhat smallish Bamboo Yarn. Taste is good. It wasn't long before I began experiencing dry hits. Today I swapped that wick out for a twelve strand version. Additionally, I cut all the loops at the ends. It was a lot to fit into the ECVs, but it did go in okay. As well, it was hard to get the juice in at first...haven't tried a refil yet. The taste remains good, perhaps as good as any device or wick I've used. The hit and vapor are like, "Holy Vapes!" ...works well. It's way too early to have any thought of how well it will hold up.
#2 Square Braided Cotton Candle Wick - ...arrived today. With it's squarish corners, I was hoping that wire would grab it a little better and not be as prone to movement. It seems to do that okay. I know some like their coils loose, but I haven't mastered that as of yet per divertning to the SS mesh clad experimentation. It hits well and delivers great flavor. The #2 seems a bit small, #1 might be considered. I'd guess that #1 might be about 1.4 times the size of #2, but really know know much about wick guages. Again, this is initial use and the long term is unknown. I'll probably attempt a double wick of the #2 in the not too distant future.
In the case of the last two above, it seems their performance is better than others I have previously tried. Both hit well and deliver good taste. Though I'm using a different juice in each, I'm guessing their performance is approximately equal. Perhaps at some point I'll set up 3 or 4 clearomizers with the same juice, similar coils and give them a good A/B/C/D testing.
Still yet to try - Oil Lamp Wick which I don't presently have. There may be other cotton variants.