Rebuildables and wicks - cotton or silica?

[DrMark]

Hi folks
Been trawling through the threads in order to take the leap into RBA/RTAs. Like others I am hopefully going for an easy one first, currently vacillating between Kaifun lite, Taifun GT or Lemo drop. After an afternoon watching youtube they all have their pros and cons.  However, I see that FT sell pre wicked coils for these tanks using silica (my first port of call before taking the DIY plunge).  Most of the rewicking videos use cotton of some form. So my question is what are the pros and cons of silica vs cotton? I tend to use 60:40 PG:VG juices at the moment.  Also any comments re RBAs gratefully received.

Cheers all

[geordie_vaper]

cotton is king

[lee]

Cotton Too

[Pepperty]

I use both, it just depends on which atomiser I'm going to use to what type of wick i make

[DrMark]

Why is cotton king and why would it be better to use one over the other in different atomisers out of interest?

[geordie_vaper]

better flavour
easier to maintain
easier to work with

in my opinion

[charliehorse]

Different materials 'wick' at different rates, so cotton may be able to provide more juice flowing into the coil than silica, enabling you to run at a higher wattage without  a dry hit.
Silica can withstand a higher temperature than cotton before it burns.
It really comes down to personal preference between them all.

[reddragon]

Personal preference with the wick, but looking at the 3 RTAs, I have no knowledge of the taifun, but of the other 2 I would recommend the lemo. I still love my kayfun lite but I have found the lemo more forgiving with the wick resulting in very few dry hits and I have not lost a drop from the lemo whereas the kayfun can be tempremental (mostly user error but frustrating none the less).

[djs]

I say cotton. The advantage of cotton wool is that you can make the best coil you can and then slide the cotton wool in.

With Silica, you have to wrap around the silica (by hand?) and this makes uneven coils. OK, so you could choose to build a 2mm internal diameter coil and then slide in some 2mm silica, buy chances are unless it's really, really, good there will be some places where the Silica 'string' isn't getting the best liquid flow. Cotton wool expands a bit when wet and avoids this issue.

That's what I reckon, anyway... oh, and if pushed, I would say Silica wicks too slowly compared to cotton wool.

[Perpetua]

Try both . . . and don't forget Rayon, which personally I prefer to Cotton as it seems to suit the type of flavours I prefer. That also makes a difference to what tastes nicest for me.

They're all reasonable enough to experiment with DrMark.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321658369194?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2661&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[Pepperty]

I use a silica loop in my spheroid builds and I also choose silica in my ebarron drippers as they are built on a ceramic cup so it's not as easy to just whip out cotton wick but it's no problem to dry burn away a flavour before swapping.

So it's very much dependant on which rebuildable i'm using as most tanks can be wicked in multiple ways with multiple materials

[Greg]

Feb 19, 2015 16:40:14 GMT Pepperty said:

I use a silica loop in my spheroid builds and I also choose silica in my ebarron drippers as they are built on a ceramic cup so it's not as easy to just whip out cotton wick but it's no problem to dry burn away a flavour before swapping.

So it's very much dependant on which rebuildable i'm using as most tanks can be wicked in multiple ways with multiple materials

I've always found the taste to be a bit off with silica. The spheroid and Dripper dont really require the wicking ability of most RBA's and the becomes more important as you increase power.

the drippers and the spheroid rely on gravity feeding the wick from above, most other Rbas ala kayfunesque have much more of an uphill battle to get juice to wick so better wicking materials make this less hit and miss IMO. That's not to say you can't get silica to work in kayfuns.

CW or variants of are king for me, plus it's cheaper 

[whiteshep]

Buy some small packs of each as which is best is subjective and only you can really say for you as for tank the lemo tanks are perfect as an introduction tank IMO. Larger build deck making it easier to perfect your technique very forgiving with wicking and easy to get into come with a prebuilt coil already installed and enough wire and cotton to keep you going for a few builds and all for a good price. If you want I've got a small amount of ekowool you can have quarter to maybe half a metre I only use cotton now so will never need it .

[*-SARIN-*]

I started with silica and used it for quite some time until i wanted to make a microcoil - that didn't end well. As others have mentioned, silica is really hard to get through the coil once you have made it and usually you wrap the kanthal around the silica - this is why making a microcoil and using silica is a PITA, it's hard to keep the turns together as the silica is not rigid. It does however have a higher melting temp and is handy if you want to use different flavours in a dripper, as you can dry burn without the worry of burning the wick unlike with cotton. It tends to last longer than cotton as well.

Cotton or rather Muji is my preferred wick choice these days, clean, good flavour and super easy to thread through a microcoil.

Rayon - worst of the wicking materials IMO. Horribly synthetic, slippery as hell and fibres all over the place.

[iLardyboy]

Since I started using Kanger Subtanks I haven't had a single dry hit or leak. I wick it with both Ken Doh and Muji Cotton, and performance is stellar.

I'd recommend them to anyone over Kayfun etc. If you're not into sub-ohming you can build higher ohms and the flavour and vapour excellent.

It'll take something special for me to use another RBA.