How to build you own coil.
You will need:
Some resistance wire
A thick needle/unfolded fat paperclip
a blowtorch/cigarette lighter
some wick (2mm silica is good to start with)
A good stiff drink
A pair of sharp scissors/nail clippers/small wirecutters
an ohm tester
A large hammer
A premade working coil that's sitting on a working mod and is ready to vape
cut a length of about 10cm of wire and a length of about 8 cm of wick. Fold the wick in half. for a first coil you want to make it easy on yourself and we can get smaller and fiddlier later. We're not aiming at a set resistance here, just a coil that works OK.
Remember that you're supposed to flame the wire first - hold one end of the wire and carefully flame it with the torch or the lighter till it glows orange along it's length.
Heat the wire too hot so that it melts in two, swear loudly and repeat with a new length of wire. Get the flame too close to your fingers and burn them. Drop the wire and lose it somewhere in the carpet.
Third times a charm - this time carefully heat the wire, but not too hot along the part of it that you want to wind. (This is called annealing and it makes the wire easier to coil as well as burning off any bad stuff on it's surface)
Pick up the wick and fold in half again and taking care not to stab yourself in recently burned fingers hold the wick along with your thick needle so that the wick goes along the length of the needle. We're going to tightly wrap the wick and the needle with wire and use the wire as a support, then slide it out later. You want to have the end of the wire pinched along with the wick and needle in your left hand (if you're right handed) and use the right hand to do the coiling.
Pull the wire firm enough so the tension holds it taught and wind it around the wick/wire/needle 4 times leaving a little gape between each coil. Swear loudly as you pull the wire too tight and it slices through the wick.
Put everything down on the table and have a vape, and a swig of stiff drink, count to 10, relax.
Repeat the coiling process again this time not pulling the wire quite so tight. Voila you've just made your first coil. Pretty isn't it
Hopefully you now have a doubled over piece of wick and a needle wrapped 4 times in resistance wire, with two long 'legs' of wire at each end. Hold onto the needle and look at one side of the coil. You'll see the coil has 4 wraps. rotate the coil and look at the underside and you'll see it has 3 wraps(or 5wraps) This is called a 3/4 coil (or a 4/5 coil) as you have 4 coils showing on one side and 3 (or 5) on the other.
Grab hold of the coiled bit of wick with your thumb and forefinger and straighten out the legs. Now attach each leg to one of the posts on the dripper using the little screws, you slip the wire under the screw and tighten it down.
Now slide out the needle and use the pointy end of it to neaten up your coil a little bit, as long as none of them are touching it's all good.
Trim off the wick so there 's a few mm sticking out of each end of your coil.
Put the dripper onto an ohm tester and see what it reads at. the easiest thing to use as an ohm tester is a mod that checks resistance, like say a Vamo. If you have a resistance of between 1.5ohms and about 3 ohms congrats! You have made a working coil.
Grab another swig of your stiff drink, and have a vape on the other ready to vape mod you have handy, you earned it.
If the coil does not work I find it best to carefully and delicately take the coil off the dripper put it onto a heavy duty table and HIT IT WITH THE HAMMER. Then start over.
Point out to the next coil that it will share the fate of it's recently flattened friend if it doesn't play nice.
Once you have a coil that works you ought to dry burn it. Silica will not burn though you could burn the coil out doing this so use a battery that's half used or turn the power settings right down first.
Pulse the coil heating it for a few secs at a time then giving it a few seconds rest between pulses. This is burnign off any gunk that's on the wick, either from manufacture or from your hands while you were coiling it. It's a wick at the end of the day, it's job is to soak up liquid, and your hands are a good source of liquid.
When you don't hear any hissing noise any more when you fire it it's ready. this also fixes the coils in place, so any neating or tidying you might want to do needs to be done before this bit.
Put a couple of drops of your chosen e-liquid on it and fire it again and it should crackle and produce vapour.
Put the lid on the dripper, drip in some juice and give it a spin, a celebratory stiff drink at this point is also not a bad idea.
Once you can do all of that (well OK most of it) then start worrying about the resistance of the coil, the neatness of the coil and all the other stuff. the thicker the wire you sue the more wraps you can put into a coil, and the more wraps you have the better the vape. The less wraps and the thicker the wire you use the lower the resistance of the finished item. What resistance/number of wraps works best is a trial and error thing but 1.6ohms ish is a good medium for regulated mods. The thicker the thing you wrap the longer the coil will be and so the higher resistance it will be. So thinner wicks, single strands of wick will give lower resistances too.
It gets a lot easier with practice, but start out just trying to make a coil that works, and then once you've made one then start thinking about what resistance etc you want.
If all else fails HIT IT WITH A HAMMER.
Oh and whatever you do don't stab yourself in the foot with the length of wire you lost somewhere in the carpet later on.
