Zomg, bamboo cotton

[Commie]

Got my spool of bamboo in the mail today. Wow, does it ever make a noticeable difference.

If I had to guess, I'd say it wicks about twice faster than yarn or cotton balls. Which means, smaller coils with a wick that keeps up without drying. Possibly lower resistance too, though I haven't tried that yet. Cleaner taste than the yarn, but I might have had crappy yarn.

 

[CATastrophe]

Hmmm. I have some bamboo to try, just haven't boiled it yet. Guess I'll be testing that tomorrow!

 

[Commie]

I didn't boil mine. It smelled clean enough and looked too thin to boil. Using 4 strands in a coil wrapped around 1mm (18 gauge) syringe needle.

 

[garyinco]

18 gauge to mm to inches got me thinking... Might be a little off-topic, but I use this site to do mathematical conversions. Comes in handy when you want to switch from mm to decimal inches to whatever. Handy all around the house. A pinch is how much of a teaspoon?

MegaConverter 2

 

[Norman Clature]

I think it lasts longer than cotton and is more slightly more forgiving with "dry burns", but the kind I had sort of had a "woody" taste to it so I still prefer the cotton for wicks, but I've only tried one type of bamboo so I'm no expert.

I've heard "cheesecloth" is the hardest to work with but is the best tasting of all the "alternative" wick material?

Norman

 

[CATastrophe]

I use a heavy duty paperclip to wrap coils. I bought a couple different wicking materials about a week ago but haven't tried them yet. I'll mess around with it tomorrow. I am definitely boiling first. So depending on how long the drying time is, I might not get around to rewicking tomorrow.

I'd been using cotton embroidery thread. It seemed to gunk up quickly. So the last few days, it's been cotton ball fluff.

 

[Norman Clature]

I don't know what my favorite cotton type is. I've been using yarn also (worsted.) I pull the 4-play parts apart into 4 separate strands before threading it (to make up for any errors in my coil builds and hopefully make contact equally with all coil wraps.) I also like the rolled cotton and cotton gauze (sort of the same thing), but the gauze and cotton balls swell when primed way more than the yarn and it can take you by surprise if you haven't used those types in awhile.

HA!

Norman

 

[CATastrophe]

That's true, Norman. I boiled the cotton balls first and got a firsthand look at how fluffy and saturated they get. They work well for wicks.

I didn't get a chance to mess with the bamboo or hemp today. Hopefully I'll get to it this weekend.