wick preferences?

[roasted]

Hi there. I've been messing with rebuilding heads for my protank and now my smoktech aro recently. I managed to brew up some heads with cotton (qtip, cotton ball) as well as cheesecloth. I have to admit, they seem to come with a degree of frustration. They hardly last. Chain vape for a day and killing a cotton wick isn't difficult. I've found that silica really isn't difficult to deal with and provides nice flavor. What makes silica easy for me especially comes in when I set up flavor wicks. For example, I only have 3mm silica, so I do the main wrap in 3mm. After that I unravel a small section of 3mm silica and add a few strands of it until I get the amount of flavor wick that I am after. Compare this to cotton of any type and I find it a bit frustrating to get nailed down right.

Perhaps wick preferences are a bit subjective, but given the rage of cotton and cheesecloth, coupled with my mediocre experiences with it, I figured I'd bring it up to brew up conversation. On top of that I'm wondering about the relevance of the wick thickness versus the vapor production. I'm using a single 3mm silica strand now with about 1mm of flavor wick. Perhaps using something thicker than that would beef up the vapor?

Thoughts?

 

[Evi|grin]

I have very little experience with rebuilding a coil (actually none) but is it possible to use a thin cotton center with a few strands of silica around the cotton for protection?

 

[ScottP]

For my EVOD I personally build my coil on a 1/16th inch nail, remove the coil from the nail, and compress with needle nose players while firing it with a lighter. Then I replace the nail, mount the coil and lock in the leads. Remove the nail and put in one boiled strand of Peaches and Creme white 100% cotton yarn. No flavor wick needed, no hand rolling cotton and guessing at thickness. It just works. if the cotton gets yukky, pull it out, dry burn the coil and put in a new piece. If the cotton isn't too bad I may just wash it and reuse it.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Peaches-Creme-4.70g-Yarn-Ecru/21668263

 

[Trayce]

For my EVOD I personally build my coil on a 1/16th inch nail, remove the coil from the nail, and compress with needle nose players while firing it with a lighter. Then I replace the nail, mount the coil and lock in the leads. Remove the nail and put in one boiled strand of Peaches and Creme white 100% cotton yarn. No flavor wick needed, no hand rolling cotton and guessing at thickness. It just works. if the cotton gets yukky, pull it out, dry burn the coil and put in a new piece. If the cotton isn't too bad I may just wash it and reuse it.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Peaches-Creme-4.70g-Yarn-Ecru/21668263

This is exactly what I want to do and intended to buy that yarn tomorrow, so THANKS for these great directions!! But one question... how to do feed the cotton wick through the pre-made coil???? Tweezers, or...?? What's your technique?

PS Why do you fire the kanthal with a lighter, and how do you do that while compressing with needle-nose? I'm picturing 3 hands and burnt needlenose.

 

[oldbikeguy]

I have very little experience with rebuilding a coil (actually none) but is it possible to use a thin cotton center with a few strands of silica around the cotton for protection?

You can buy Ekowool with a cotton center core

 

[Trayce]

You can buy Ekowool with a cotton center core

You like to take all the fun out of things, don't you.

 

[ScottP]

This is exactly what I want to do and intended to buy that yarn tomorrow, so THANKS for these great directions!! But one question... how to do feed the cotton wick through the pre-made coil???? Tweezers, or...?? What's your technique?

PS Why do you fire the kanthal with a lighter, and how do you do that while compressing with needle-nose? I'm picturing 3 hands and burnt needlenose.

I lightly dampen one end of the cotton and twist in into a point then just kind of screw it through. You have to twist in the direction that makes the cotton naturally tighter and not looser. Occasionally it will get just barely out the other side and kind of hang. If that happens I snag the cotton with a straight pin or push pin and pull it on through.

When wrapping a coil I am not good enough to keep the coils touching. So I pull it off the nail and the coil is kind of like a spring. So I GENTLY compress the spring with the tip of the needle nose pliers and burn it glowing with a cigarette lighter. I do this until the coils stay touching or very near touching when I let loose of them. Doing this a 7 wrap EASILY fits inside of an EVOD head and if I had a lower gauge I could fit a 10-12 wrap pretty easily. Oh once I get the coil positioned right in the pliers, I hold that with one hand and operate the lighter with the other.

I am one of the few people that are truly ambidextrous so that is fairly easy for me to do, it may be a tad more difficult for someone that is single hand dominant...I really don't know. All I can say is YMMV.

 

[roasted]

What is it that makes people favor peaches and cream cotton over unflavored cotton?

 

[JayTater]

What is it that makes people favor peaches and cream cotton over unflavored cotton?

PLEASE say you're joking!!! LMAO! Its the brand name

 

[roasted]

LOL. I'll just sit down in the corner over here...

 

[roasted]

ScottP - So in the end your coils are all touching? I always aim for spacing. I thought you had to have them not touching...

 

[roasted]

Well, I ended up picking up the exact cotton yarn that was linked earlier from Walmart. I must say, I don't really understand the point of cotton balls or cheesecloth in comparison to cotton yarn like this, mostly because it's significantly easier to whip up a wick out of properly shaped cotton. Using a 1/16 drill bit, I wound up the coil and sat it in the head, put the rubber grommet and pin in, pulled the bit out, then slid in a new section of yarn. If you twist it beforehand to make it tighter it goes in rather easily.

I at first tried with a flavor wick, which was basically a section of the yarn. There are 4 strands that make up for the yarn, so I used 2 strands and laid them across the coil. I did this because at first I had flooding, but I think I primed the wick with a bit too much juice at first. Ultimately it was sort of burning a bit, so I pulled the flavor wicks back out. Now I'm not experiencing any flooding at all. Things seem very smooth. I'm curious how things will pan out as I fry this wick. I hope I can get the wick out without destroying the coil. Prior experience suggests this isn't easily possible, but we'll give it a shot when the time comes.

I find that creating a coil with a drill bit is infinitely easier than any other methods I've tried, including wrapping the wick with a paperclip to help stabilize it. As a result maybe I can get some more tightly wound coils going. I'm currently doing 6 over 5 under on my Smoktech ARO for 2.1 ohm. I could probably fit 7 in there, but we'll see.

 

[rbeckys8]

I wrap 5 times=2.0, but think I will try 4 times and see if that's OK on my evods...I use 3mm silica but I am going to use the yarn today for the heck of it..

 

[ScottP]

ScottP - So in the end your coils are all touching? I always aim for spacing. I thought you had to have them not touching...

Coils having to not touch is a myth. The style of coil I am using is called a micro coil. You can read all about it here:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...271-micro-coils-increase-vapor-flavor-th.html

EDIT: I will try to rebuild another head in a bit and post a pic before I put the wick through.

 

[ScottP]

I wrap 5 times=2.0, but think I will try 4 times and see if that's OK on my evods...I use 3mm silica but I am going to use the yarn today for the heck of it..

Are you wrapping that Silica directly, or wrapping on something else then threading the silica through? Also what wire type?

By my guess, if you use one less wrap it will drop your resistance to about 1.7-1.8 but that just a guess with the info I have now.

 

[JulesXsmokr]

some people feel comfortable by inserting a tiny needle as a backbone for the wick and coil it tightly that way, then remove the needle when done.

 

[Krazirob]

be careful on the protanks.....if the silica is too thick then it will not wick properly cause it will clog the gap on the post

 

[JulesXsmokr]

True - one guy posted that he had drilled the cavity on coil head to get 3mm silica thru it.

 

[longbraids]

Hi I am so glad to see this thread, I just bought 3mm ekowool and 32 kanthal to use for my first rebuild which will be my protank . I have read about leaking if you leave off flavor wicks (mine have all leaked when low a little anyhow with kanger attys)but I was inspired to do this after watching vid done by vaper lady on utube. She uses 3mm silica and 32kanthal with no flavor wicks and claims great results with little to no leaking. She didn't have any problem with size of wick it all went together smooth as silk. Guess I'll just jump in and go for it.

 

[ScottP]

some people feel comfortable by inserting a tiny needle as a backbone for the wick and coil it tightly that way, then remove the needle when done.

I used to do that, but quickly realized that getting consistency in coil tightness and resistance was all but impossible with that method. Some coils would get wrapped too tight, others too loose and resistance from coil to coil was all over the map. So some would be great and others would just not vape right.

If you use a drill bit, nail, or something like that your coils will jump astronomically in consistency. Once you then perfect the wick to fit your coil, you know that every one you build from there on out will be just like the last one.

Just my humble opinion of course.