So I recently bought myself some ni80 wire and tried my first hand at building a fused clapton. Took some time to get a good enough wire to be used for an actual coil but she's working good. I've been using this particular coil for just about 2 days and noticed I was getting some burnt hits. I'm using a Zeus RTA so it's easy to take off the tank and not waste any liquid that was already in it. Taking it off revealed a dry wick around the coil (still saturated more towards the deck though) so I'm assuming my wick was too long (or poorly done?) and I'm gonna rewick it in a sec. I also noticed that the coil was starting to discolor towards the brown/black side especially in the middle. I used to have the same thing using Kanthal with my parallel/twisted builds where they'd discolored in the same way after only 2 days. Should I deem the coil burnt though after it's only lasted for 2 days?
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When to deem a coil burnt?
- Thread starter SavantCS
- Start date
When the coil ohms way different than when installed I consider it burnt.
I change coil when I feel like I need a change.
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Good advice. Ohms value is still the same and with my previous Kanthal builds they didn't have a lower value either. Just rewicked her and we'll see how it goes.
Thanks.
So I should just fire it without a wick in it?
Teresa P
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Yep, and I have an old toothbrush I use to brush off any ash/debris from that. (Make sure it's cooled off first though)
Alright, I'm sure I have an old toothbrush lying around somewhere. Thanks for the info.
Be gentle with the brush and only pulse the fire to dry burn...... turn down wattage if regulated..... basically your looking for a dull orange glow in a dark room or less.
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Worked like a charm, using the toothbrush though seemed to give off a bit of jello-ish gunk. What about the wick being a bit dry around the coil anything I need to do about that?
Another question after dry firing her and and cleaning that gunk off I wicked her up again and tried her out. At first when I took a few hits I thought I was tasting cotton and just thought it had to break in but after a fair amount of hits and the taste not changing any bit I decided to rewick it and tried to clean her up again. The smell that came off of the coil was the same as the taste I'd been tasting when taking a hit off of her before and the coil became noticeably more black as I was dry firing her to clean off the gunk. Not quite sure what's going on here?
Some toothpaste reside on the toothbrush?
Gel toothpaste?
It's a new brush and I rinsed it out thoroughly before using it (I'm 100% certain it was new cause it was still in a sealed box). It felt much like gelatin really cause it wasn't coming off easily. I threw away the coil and built a new one, using different cotton now but I'm still not certain what that was.
Btw how do you guys clean off the coil? Do you rinse it down, let it dry, dry burn and then clean it off or should I be doing it in a different order?
AndriaD
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I pull the old wick, dry-fire it about 3-5 times, with a clear water rinse after each dry-fire. I have reverse-osmosis-filtered water at my kitchen sink, though. Then I give it a quick pulse, drip some juice on the bare coil, another quick pulse, another drop or two of juice, then re-wick and juice it up. Doing the drops of juice while the coil is still bare, after dry-burning, helps the break-in period be a lot shorter, whether dry-burning a coil or mounting a new one -- a trick I got from @UncleRJ -- works great!
If a coil is dirty enough to need a brush to clean it, then it should just be replaced. Wire's cheap.
Andria
If a coil is dirty enough to need a brush to clean it, then it should just be replaced. Wire's cheap.
Andria
He started asking "deem" and then "how" - and I add sweetener and vanilla like mad..
I agree, I trash them if they don't come clean right-quick.. I have as much fun build coils as vaping them. Today I did above on the Taifun clone.. It's a real close tossup: new coil or enjoy the tank - it's not IDEAL, but.. damn, the cleaning made that much difference. I gave it a ml to test the cleaning, enjoyed it, and refilled to the tippy-top..
I'm sure one of the other rinsed-out atty need a recoil, neverfear ;-)
The discoloration got cleared off after dryfiring so the brush wasn’t exactly needed. I don’t mind having to replace coils pretty often the thing I don’t like is the time needed to build them since I’m using fused claptons. Now don’t get me wrong I like building but having to build a fused clapton every 2 days is gonna start feeling like a chore rather than a hobby pretty quickly. If dryfiring is all it needs to clean it up again then I’m set and my coils will hopefully last me longer.
I’m not, they were starting to discolor after 2 days. I previously thought that meant they were burnt but they were just dirty and could be cleaned off easily by dryfiring them. Being new to building my coils will be nowhere near perfect but they’re not too bad either.
AndriaD
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I would say that they only need to be replaced when the flavor either fades, and dry-burning/re-wicking doesn't bring it back, or starts tasting like metal. I personally can't see any reason for those fancy-dancy coils; all they do is require a lot more wattage and battery power for all that metal mass, give a lot more nooks and crannies for gunk to hide, plus the time and difficulty of building them -- if you really want a lot of metal mass, just use fatter wire!
@PoppaVic -- I also use a high-gunk ejuice, though it's gotten a lot cleaner since I stopped using sweetener, and reduced from 31% to 24% flavoring -- but even at 24%, the shisha strawberry is 14%, and as an organic-derived flavoring, it's very gunking -- which is why all those insanely fancy coils will never be for me. I'm a dinosaur vaper -- 10w or less, 29ga kanthal, just under 2 ohms -- of course, a VERY tight draw makes all that possible, and they just don't make attys like that anymore.
These coils have been known to last 3 months before needing to be replaced:
Andria
@PoppaVic -- I also use a high-gunk ejuice, though it's gotten a lot cleaner since I stopped using sweetener, and reduced from 31% to 24% flavoring -- but even at 24%, the shisha strawberry is 14%, and as an organic-derived flavoring, it's very gunking -- which is why all those insanely fancy coils will never be for me. I'm a dinosaur vaper -- 10w or less, 29ga kanthal, just under 2 ohms -- of course, a VERY tight draw makes all that possible, and they just don't make attys like that anymore.
These coils have been known to last 3 months before needing to be replaced:
Andria
UncleRJ
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Like Andria said, this method works great as long as you do it about every 3-4 tanks of E-Liquid.
Almost hate to say this as it most likely sounds like I am lazy, but the coil I have installed now has been going for full 6 months!
\
Also when dry burning, I never go above 25 watts.
Kanthal I assume?
AndriaD
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6 months, no shit? That's outstanding! I think the absolute longest I've been able to go is about 4 months, and that only happened once, and only a couple times for the 3 months coils; usually it's more like maybe 6-8wks.
I vape at 9.5 to 10w; for dry-burning, I turn it down to 9.2. Generally I can dry-burn a coil about every week or two, 3-4 times, before the coil just starts staying dark. The trick you posted about the drops on the freshly-mounted or freshly dry-burned coil is a godsend -- almost no break-in time at all!
Andria
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"Clampton" - it sounds like something from Futurama ;-)
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