Will brushing my coil with a toothbrush and dish soap taint the flavor ?

[Sinsa]

Made my first alien coil about a month ago and got some gunk buildup, I hear the dry burn then dip underwater weakens and reduces the life of the coil, but I also want to remove the gunk to improve the life of it.

Obviously I would rinse it thoroughly afterwards.

 

[Caihlen]

Try rinsing the coil in hot water, then dry burn it. Gently brush it off with a soft brush, re-wick and go...

 

[Toots]

I use dish soap and toothbrush all the time. Rinsing would indeed remove all soap residue, and gentle dry burning would remove most of everything else.

 

[Thumpszilla]

Alot of coil builders wash their coils with dish soap before firing on stainless steel because it is supposed to make the coil color more when pulsing and look better for pictures. I have tried it both ways and have not noticed a significant difference. As far as doing it between cotton old and new idk. What I do is take out the cotton, lower my wattage and pulse fire it. This hardens the gunk and makes it brittle as the coil gets good and got it will come off on its own for the most part. The rest I brush off with a gun cleaning brush ( metal ) bought just for that purpose. The reason I use the brush I do is it fits in one of my vape organizers very nicely. When the coil is good and clean I rewick and go back to vaping. Wire is cheap don't worry about a coil lasting months when you can build one for $0.50 when it no longer comes as clean as you would like wrap another and keep vaping. Btw congrats on the alien coil. I can do braids and all kinds of stuff but still not a satisfactory alien. I think I am stretching my wire back out to far after I decore the Clapton.

Sent from my Z981 using Tapatalk

 

[djsvapour]

I'm intrigued about the idea of dry burning reducing life.

I mean, how long do you want to go on... months, years?

Dry-burning is controversial enough (i.m.o) but I do it nonetheless; gently/carefully. I've never seen a coil degrade enough to be forced to remove it... does such a thing exist? Who's saying this?

I'm with @Caihlen on this.

 

[Alter]

I'm intrigued about the idea of dry burning reducing life.

Dryburning like you see in the videos of those who burn their coils red hot for too long do more damage to their insulators from the excessive heat. I know from working with 30 and especially 32 gauge, your first couple rewickings the coil is good then it begins to easily bend and distort trying to put your wick through it. Not so much with the thick wire, I haven't noticed my 28 or lower gauges distort. I just barely bring the coil to a red then scrape the cooties off, repeat. I remove the coil out of my subtank RBA and burn it separately with a propane torch, its easier to scrape all around the coil when its a clapton. Then replace the coil back into the RBA, works quite well

 

[Imfallen_Angel]

I wouldn't use soap, just a quick dry burn, rinse, repeat and if your coil is still badly gummed up, build a new one.

I'd worry about soap getting into the nook and crannies of the deck, and unless you take your deck off the mod, the rinsing required to ensure that you've removed all traces of soap could be risky.

Toothbrush can be fine if you're using a gauge that's strong enough, but you may end up having to re-balance your coils after should you move the wraps a bit. I just gently scrape with my ceramic twizzers and that gets the worst bits should they be stuck to the coil.

About dry-burn, the goal is heat to the point that some colour starts, so that the gunk comes off it or ensure it's heating correctly, but never glow them hard... This modifies the metal's structure and create oxides, and neither are good.

I wouldn't recommend doing a cleaning via dry-burning more than 3 times max before you switch to a new coil.

The worse thing I see is anyone that glows their coils red (or even white) for the "cool" factor, and not getting that this is a health risk.

I advise that if you're going to glow your coil for any reason, do it in a dark room and only do it to when you see the color starting.

 

[djsvapour]

I know from working with 30 and especially 32 gauge, your first couple rewickings the coil is good then it begins to easily bend and distort trying to put your wick through it. Not so much with the thick wire,

Thanks for pointing this out. I no longer use the thinner wires, so looking back I did rebuild those more often, you are right.

 

[djsvapour]

About dry-burn, the goal is heat to the point that some colour starts, so that the gunk comes off it or ensure it's heating correctly, but never glow them hard... This modifies the metal's structure and create oxides, and neither are good.

Thank you too for this advice. Wise.

 

[Thumpszilla]

I wouldn't use soap, just a quick dry burn, rinse, repeat and if your coil is still badly gummed up, build a new one.

I'd worry about soap getting into the nook and crannies of the deck, and unless you take your deck off the mod, the rinsing required to ensure that you've removed all traces of soap could be risky.

Toothbrush can be fine if you're using a gauge that's strong enough, but you may end up having to re-balance your coils after should you move the wraps a bit. I just gently scrape with my ceramic twizzers and that gets the worst bits should they be stuck to the coil.

About dry-burn, the goal is heat to the point that some colour starts, so that the gunk comes off it or ensure it's heating correctly, but never glow them hard... This modifies the metal's structure and create oxides, and neither are good.

I wouldn't recommend doing a cleaning via dry-burning more than 3 times max before you switch to a new coil.

The worse thing I see is anyone that glows their coils red (or even white) for the "cool" factor, and not getting that this is a health risk.

I advise that if you're going to glow your coil for any reason, do it in a dark room and only do it to when you see the color starting.

So if you don't glow your coils any then how do you identify hotspots and fix them? Any of the big name advance coil builders glow their coils to find and fix hotspots. So I am curious where your data is coming from. Also if you have ever built with ni200 you know it is very springy and you need to anneal the wire to get rid of this before building this involves bringing the wire to a glowing state. I have been building coils for 3 1/2years and watch video from most of the top builders and all glow their coils.

Sent from my Z981 using Tapatalk

 

[Imfallen_Angel]

So if you don't glow your coils any then how do you identify hotspots and fix them? Any of the big name advance coil builders glow their coils to find and fix hotspots. So I am curious where your data is coming from. Also if you have ever built with ni200 you know it is very springy and you need to anneal the wire to get rid of this before building this involves bringing the wire to a glowing state. I have been building coils for 3 1/2years and watch video from most of the top builders and all glow their coils.

Sent from my Z981 using Tapatalk

I think you misread my post.. I did say that glowing is ok, but only to an extent... to go in a dark room, and glow them gently. (and this applies to either dry-burn for cleaning or to see hotspots)

I have built with NI200 at 26, 28, 30 and if you have, you should know that you shouldn't ever glow NI200.

To be honest, I only glow for hotspots for "making sure" but 9/10 of my builds, I don't have any.

It's glowing bright red to white that I really don't agree with. A quick gentle red is more than enough.

 

[Imfallen_Angel]

Just to add... you should only glow metals that are safe to do so with...

and NI200 and TI are NOT.. NEVER glow these.

If you're going to want to reuse coils made of these metals.. just heat gently and rinse BEFORE the coil glows.. but 9/10, these aren't really worth trying to clean the coils, just ditch and rebuild.

 

[Imfallen_Angel]

Dryburning like you see in the videos of those who burn their coils red hot for too long do more damage to their insulators from the excessive heat. I know from working with 30 and especially 32 gauge, your first couple rewickings the coil is good then it begins to easily bend and distort trying to put your wick through it. Not so much with the thick wire, I haven't noticed my 28 or lower gauges distort. I just barely bring the coil to a red then scrape the cooties off, repeat. I remove the coil out of my subtank RBA and burn it separately with a propane torch, its easier to scrape all around the coil when its a clapton. Then replace the coil back into the RBA, works quite well

I tried using a torch a few times.. ended up finding that it's way easy to melt a coil very fast.. lol... I don't use a torch anymore.

But these were with 28-30 gauge coils, so I was pushing my luck and knew it.

(edit: forgot the mention that I did this over a metal sink for safety reasons)