Rayon has to be almost coil distorting tight as your wicking. That leads to massive thick tails especially if your using a wide ID coil. Its those thick tails that cause the problems with rayon.
Forget everything to do with cotton cause rayon acts opposite to how cotton reacts in a atty. It is not cotton of any sort...not even close to it once you get the hang on how to use rayon properly.
Some say rayon shrinks...it doesn't but settles as you juice the coil so your super tight coil does loosen some after being juiced. It settles cause the juice flows outside the rayon fiber so it doesn't expand unlike cotton that the juice flows inside the fiber thus expanding the fiber.
Brush the tails with pointy tweezers, pin or anything pointy to remove the bulk and straighten out the fibers, anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the bulk from brushing the tail. Hold down one side as your brushing the other not to remove fibers from the coil then cut the excess off rather than pulling them.
Less is more with the rayon tails, too much bulk or tails will choke the coil.
If there is a breakin taste using rayon then your atty is wicked WRONG, probably too loose but the taste will go away after a while. properly wicked rayon build has NO breakin taste what so ever.
Making bunnie ears then packing down dry wicking into the atty is wrong with rayon. Brush the bulk out of the dry wick first making all the fibers straight and pretty then juicing the wick and proceed to put it into the channel or well trying to keep the fibers straight. A mish mash of wicking and the juice won't flow nicely to the coil so shortest route having straight fibers, even having some "shoulders" to be sure the last coil wrap isn't exposed is OK.
No need to boil or rinse rayon but having clean hands is a must.
Take that box then cut it into however many foot parcels then ziplock the parcels. It will get dusty over time cause the box lasts for eons and just gets crap falling inside every time you get some more wick.
I've been wicking my subtank mini's, TFV4's, Merlins and Kayfuns with rayon for well over 2 years now and unless some earth shattering new wicking material comes around I will never wick my attys with anything other than rayon.
Thinning the tail.... don't bother with what he's doing but at the 30:25 mark he shows how to thin the tail with tweezers. Its the only example that I came across and changed the way I use to trim my wick with scissors but now thin the tail with exceptional results.
