Nope, a few YouTube videos and I was good to go--and that's on a technically not very rebuildable head, the Kanger T3S tank. You can do it, but it's a bit fiddly.
It costs pennies per head. These days, I use rayon, which works out to $0.0004 per wick, or 25 wicks to the penny. If the wire needs replacing (rare), that hikes the price to about $0.02 maximum.
All you need is wire (if it needs replacing), wicking material (rayon, cotton, or silica), scissors (larger scissors for cutting wire, cuticle scissors for trimming wick work for me), whatever your deck requires to attach the wire (often a Philips head screwdriver, sometimes a specialty screwdriver), and something to test the coil resistance (a meter or an electronic mod).