Eroll cotton wick taste

[Iamno1]

Hey guys, I took apart three eroll atty today to clean them.

Dry burnt all the coil.

I took one of the silica wick out and couldn't put them back in. The thing just fell apart in my hand.

So I decided to rewick them all with some q-tip cotton.

The thing is, I've been boiling these cotton, drying them and I just cannot get that disgusting cotton taste to go away.

I don't know what my option are at this point. The coils all work fine.

These atty are expensive and I don't want to chuck them yet.

 

[AegisPrime]

Maybe try SS wicks instead? They're supposed to work well in the eRoll you could also rewick the attys with silica again.

 

[Iamno1]

I don't really have any silica on hand right now. Don't really want to order anything over the internet again.

Plus, it's kind of disturbing how it just turns into dust when I tried to compress it to fit into the spike.

And SS wicks, I just found out today about the chromium scare.

Has anyone tried ceramic wick in their eroll? Theoretically, can't we make the atty last forever by dry burning the coil every once in a while?

I have some spare atty that I might just use for the moment until I figure out what to do next.

 

[telsie]

I don't really have any silica on hand right now. Don't really want to order anything over the internet again.

Plus, it's kind of disturbing how it just turns into dust when I tried to compress it to fit into the spike.

And SS wicks, I just found out today about the chromium scare.

Has anyone tried ceramic wick in their eroll? Theoretically, can't we make the atty last forever by dry burning the coil every once in a while?

I have some spare atty that I might just use for the moment until I figure out what to do next.

Are you sure that was silica wick that turned to dust? I've never had that happen. I'm thinking maybe you got some fiberglass wick by mistake. But anyway, if you're looking for silica wick, I've bought this from LiteCigUSA and it works fine. That 2mm size is a tad fat, so it works best if you pull a few strands out of it to reduce the thickness.

For some info about cotton wicks (I've never tried that myself), check out the last post on this page (and a bit of discussion on the page after that).

 

[rj134]

Hi,

here are a some tips based on my experience. For reference I'm using the eRoll since August 13 and still use the 5 atomizers I initially bought with them.

1. Use 100% organic cotton! Don't use Q-Tips
   Get 100% organic cotton from the grocery store. It should say so on the package. Here in Germany where I live they call it "bio-cotton" and it's guaranteed 100% cotton unbleached and without additives.
   vaping on anything else is potentially harmful and will most likely result in bad taste. I started with Q-Tips, too, but they did have a pretty nasty side taste. I suspect this is since most brands aren't made with pure bio-cotton and some are even made with materials other than cotton. The ones I used didn't even say on the box what they were made of so I used them once in a pinch and never again. You definitely don't want to vape on stuff when you don't even know what it's made of, right?
   Plus a bag of bio-cotton costs like 2 bucks so it's not only better and much easier to use but also way cheaper.
2. How to roll the wick:
   To start you should always wash you hands lest you'll contaminate the wick with whatever you have on them. This is important! Oil and sweat from your hands can and will produce a really bad wick so make sure your hands are clean.
   
   Now, for the eGo C atomizer heads you really only need a tiny bit of cotton. It's actually less than half as much as you'd pull off of a Q-Tip.
   Here's an example of just how little cotton I normally use. Please excuse the image quality as I had to take the pictures with my phone cam and I'm at work right now
   
   
   
   Make sure that you don't compress the cotton too much! Barely apply any pressure as you roll it between your fingers. It should feel really soft as you roll it. Not solid at all. Just lightly twist it until it becomes a wick.
   Compressing it too hard will result in bad taste. It doesn't wick properly because the capillary effect doesn't get rolling and you can possibly even get dry hits. And trust me... you do not want dry hits on cotton it'll make you throw up.
   
   Roll the cotton so it becomes a really airy loose, tiny thread at the top and kind of like a little ball at the bottom where it touches the coil. Kind of like this:
   
   
   
   Notice that I actually removed another bit off what we started with to get that shape.
   
   Now you pull it through the atty cap:
   
   
   
   Note that the wick diameter is a fair bit smaller than the cone. This is how it should be! Once you prime the wick with liquid the cotton will expand so heavily that it fills the entire cone and wicks really well.
   
   Now you just clip off the top and bottom ends using nail clippers or sharp scissors. Then you prime the wick with liquid before putting it all back on the coil. Be liberal here! You want to really soak the wick in liquid lest you'll instantly burn it to the coil on your first drag which makes it taste bad from the get go.
   
   It takes a little bit of practice to get it right but if you follow these instructions you should barely get any cotton taste at all.
   With my liquids I get just a tiny hint of cotton taste on the first one or two drags after which it's completely gone and you get that pure taste from your liquid you're looking for.

Hope this helps. I found cotton to be the absolute best wicking material, because if you use it right it's not only free but also produces the best flavor and vapor. Silica, fiber and SS don't even come close IMO as all of them do produce side tastes.
And then there's also the health aspect. Of course this is all lacking research and we could all be wrong but the potential consequences of inhaling microscopic silica / fiber fragments into my lungs seems pretty damn scary to me. I'd rather go with organic cotton, which is something I believe the body can deal with and we've been using it for all kinds of medical applications for a long time.

 

[Iamno1]

Hey rj134, thanks for the tip. Is the bottom of the wick supposed to be long enough to be touch the coil?

How long do you use the wick before getting a burnt hit?

I really want to make cotton work too because I might be traveling oversea and many places don't sell eroll atomizer.

How long do these atty last if you change out the wick often and clean/dry burn the coil (clear/70pg/30vg juice)?

I might give cotton another shot after reading your post.

 

[Plum]

Wow, rj, that's the best description I have found for rewicking ego atties, thought it was more complicated, which is why I've never tried.
I have done dry burning and vodka cleaning, with moderate success. Today I was inspired to get some cotton balls and try this.
And I can say that so far, so good, a much better revival with a new wick.
Thanks very much

 

[rj134]

Hey guys,

glad to help! Let me answer your questions real quick...

Hey rj134, thanks for the tip. Is the bottom of the wick supposed to be long enough to be touch the coil?

Yeah it should definitely touch the coil. Actually try to shape it so that it covers the entire top surface of the coil. This way you get more vapor production and better cooling flow for better flavor.

How long do you use the wick before getting a burnt hit?

I never get a dry or burnt hit. As said a dry hit on cotton is really bad the taste is absolutely horrible.

A fresh wick performs best between three and 14 days. However, as soon as I notice a drop in vapor production or noticable impurity in flavor I replace it.
So it really depends on the liquid, too. Some of them, especially the high VG sugary ones, can gunk up both wick and coil within two or three days. But this is really the major advantage of cotton: Due to the fact that re-wicking is so easy and fast you really don't care much anymore once you've got the hang of it. So you end up always getting the best possible vape.

Replacing the wick incl. dryburn takes two or three minutes max. To make the process a little faster I made a really primitive little mount for the atty. It's nothing sophisticated but gets the job done...

How long do these atty last if you change out the wick often and clean/dry burn the coil (clear/70pg/30vg juice)?

When I bought the eRoll I got it with a total of five attys. That was in August 2013 and I'm still using them. Haven't bought a new one, yet. Two of them are LR attys, even.

I always dry burn the coil when re-wicking.

Wow, rj, that's the best description I have found for rewicking ego atties, thought it was more complicated, which is why I've never tried.
I have done dry burning and vodka cleaning, with moderate success. Today I was inspired to get some cotton balls and try this.
And I can say that so far, so good, a much better revival with a new wick.
Thanks very much

Yeah I initially tried Vodka too but it doesn't really do much.
Using this method of dryburning and cotton the attys are pretty much like new and the taste with cotton is even better than with the original wicks IMO.

 

[Plum]

Spoke too soon!
Started getting dry hits....
I soaked it really well to start with which gave me the initial results, but then it started burning.
Not sure if I used too much or too little cotton.
Any chance you could repeat the pic of the cotton next to a something so I can gauge how much you're using? Also, how close to the top and bottom of the spike do you cut it?
Thanks for your help.

 

[rj134]

Spoke too soon!
Started getting dry hits....
I soaked it really well to start with which gave me the initial results, but then it started burning.
Not sure if I used too much or too little cotton.
Any chance you could repeat the pic of the cotton next to a something so I can gauge how much you're using? Also, how close to the top and bottom of the spike do you cut it?
Thanks for your help.

I cut the wick to pretty much the same shape as the original ones i.e. at the top I hold the clipper directly to the spike so that the wick sits flush in it. The bottom end I clip off a little more than a millimeter below the bottom end of the cap so that it ends up touching the coil without wrapping around it when you put the cap back in.

I'm not at home right now so I can't add pictures. Was planning to re-wick this atty I'm using right now tomorrow, though, so I'll post a few more pictures then.

 

[Rookoptomus]

just got my eroll, i use 100%vg so i ran into a little problem in the beginning but just took apart the atty and primed the crap outta the wick and now its wicking so far so good, would this cotton your talking about be even better for VG wicking?

 

[patkin]

Just put a drop of distilled water in your tank. It won't dimish flavor at just that much nor lighten your nic strength enough to make a difference. If it works out, then add distilled water to your juice in the bottle... you can add up to 30%. I add 10% to my 50/50 juices no matter what I use them in if there are wicking problems.

 

[Rookoptomus]

awesome thanks i was just gonna look that up, caz it seems that the vg just won't go down the tank to the atty

 

[chefkeith]

After a while, you can tell which viscosities are going to work by swirling the liquid in the bottle, then you just adjust the water a few drops at a time. Just have to learn by doing, though.

 

[chefkeith]

Out of distilled water and don't wanna head to the store?

Simply boil water in a sauce pan or sauté pan. Place a very clean tight fitting lid on for a few seconds until water condenses on the inside. Quickly remove the lid and tilt it sideways into a shot glass to collect the distilled water. Repeat until you have enough water or until the lid becomes so hot that the steam doesn't want to condense on it. I can usually get enough water this way to thin about 10 ml of juice ;-)

 

[rj134]

Hey there,

sorry for not replying sooner with the pictures I promised. Was on travel and never got around to it.

Also refined the technique a little bit:
What you can do is roll the cotton up to a longer wick and then just clip off both ends with nail clippers. Then, once you pull it through the atty cap you put the whole thing on a ball pen tip and then feather out the cotton where it'll touch the coil using a small screwdriver or similar.
This way it's much easier to make the wick. You also get much more consistent results. Clipping off the bottom part where it touches the coil beforehand and then feathering it out after threading it through the cap enables you to get it exactly right every time.
Folding the excess piece of wick over the spike before putting it on the ball pen tip helps keeping the wick in place so you can feather the cotton and then prime it with liquid.

It's a little hard to describe, so I made a few pictures to illustrate.

Hope this helps.

just got my eroll, i use 100%vg so i ran into a little problem in the beginning but just took apart the atty and primed the crap outta the wick and now its wicking so far so good, would this cotton your talking about be even better for VG wicking?

For the VG juices I had, yeah, definitely.

Take this with a grain of salt though as I only used pure VG on the origial silica wick once so that's my only point of reference. Never tried it with SS mesh. Since I began using cotton I never looked back cause the taste and everything is just that much better... and it's free, too. I like free... a lot.

 

[patkin]

I still can't figure out how you get the wicking through the spike hole especially without compressing it. The only way I've been able to rewick with silica is to loop it over a dental floss threader to pull it through but the result didn't keep feeding properly past 10 or so puffs.

 

[Rookoptomus]

What would be the best wick to use for the eroll with 100%vg or close to it? mesh? if so what kind, and if cotton just this bio 100%organic cotton your talking about? i did few water drops to the juice which seems to help a little but id like better improvement and don't wanna totally water down my liquid

 

[Rookoptomus]

I was actually considering drilling the atomizer spike hole tad bit bigger then rewick them? as I'm having trouble with vg juice

 

[rj134]

I was actually considering drilling the atomizer spike hole tad bit bigger then rewick them? as I'm having trouble with vg juice

I don't think it'd make a big difference but sure why not give it a shot?

One more thing you can try is just take the cap off and wick the tank directly to the coil. Just thread it about a millimeter or two into the tank and make the wick long enough so that it touches the coil when you plug the tank in.

Tried this some time ago. Didn't make a real difference with my standard 70/30 juice here, but pure VG might wick better this way.