😀 – Apologies for the state of my room.
Greetings.
So I have been busy, apart from the usual one poem a day. I adore updating this blog daily, it helps provide a sense of structure. As to the above… Well, I’ve lately branched out even further into the world of DIY vaping. One of the reasons is money now that I’ve gone part time, another is simply that I like to tinker with things.
I bought a corded drill so that I could start making the more complex coils that provide a higher quality and more flavourful vape. Also juice mixing supplies, however I shall leave that for a different post as I want to focus on the wire here.
Why do I need a drill, I hear you ask?
A drill allows me to do a number of things that would either be impossible or too time consuming to be feasible by hand; with it I can straighten wire, twist it, work with different types of wire to combine them together, like wrapping 34gauge Nichrome (a very thin, low resistance wire) around 26gauge Nichrome (much thicker wire to do the main work, although still relatively thin). Vape coils consisting of this thin wire wrapped around thicker wire are known as ‘clapton coils’. The thicker core wire does the bulk work of heating up and the thinner outer layer serves as a heatsink, also providing nooks and crannies into which juice will collect to improve the wicking properties. All in all, it results in a much more flavourful vape. The above video shows me having some fun doing exactly what I’ve just described. 🙂
Now onto some of the other things I have done with my new toy.
Experimentation has been key in slowly learning what I can do, how I need to develop my skills and what works well for me.
My tools and spools of various gauge wire. The lower the gauge the thicker it is, higher is thinner, even finer than human hair as we go above a certain point.
I begin by straightening wire so that it will behave when I am wrapping the thin outer layer around it. For the core I am using 26gauge Nichrome (it heats up faster than the traditional Kanthal) and 34gauge Nichrome for the outside.
Pliers, drill, wires to straighten. Oh yeah, and my box mod with my own e-juice. ^^
Yes, I am doing this on my bed. A newly made bed I might add, alas that I have less room in here now!
With that done I feed the thinner 34gauge into the drill chuck and begin wrapping it, supporting the core wire with my left hand and maintaining tension as the 34gauge spools off to wrap around the rotating 26gauge. It went beautifully, I was so surprised! Very clean, practically no gaps at all.
This is just one project. I did two others 😛
As for my other little projects…I took a length of 24gauge Stainless Steel and straightened it, then took 0.5mm Kanthal ribbon wire and twisted them together. This is known as ‘Tiger Wire’ due to the uniform pattern of stripes that results from twisting the two.
For my last wire (I wrapped more later in the week, tinkering addict that I am) I twisted some 26gauge Nichrome and then tried to lay some 34gauge into the sloping grooves that the twists make; this is a type known as ‘Helix’. Note that I say ‘tried’. I really did. Instead of ending up with a piece of wire that was round because I’d lined it up perfectly, I had the wire lining the outside twists. A shame. I have coiled them all up but not yet vaped any of these. I have tried my clapton wire from the 2nd batch that I made, shown in the video at the top of this post and it is wonderful. Such a sense of accomplishment.
Apologies for the poor image quality of the finished products. I still need to purchase a proper macro lens for this type of photography. On the left is my attempt at Helix wire, then Tiger in the middle and clapton on the right. You can see some kinks here and there, I’m still learning, but very proud of my efforts thus far! 😀
The final resistance of the wire I’m vaping on there was low, much lower than I’m used to, but over the past couple of weeks I’m definitely more au fait with this type of vaping. 0.12 ohms was the resistance it came out to, suitable for vaping at around 90 watts.
Thank you so much for reading this (long as hell) post and being a part of my journey.
Raviera.
