I just bought a billow v2 and made a few coils. I noticed the coils I made as well as the coils it came with have a different taste compared to my kanger subtank coils and nautilus mini coils. It’s hard to describe, but it’s kinda like a “warm” taste, not burned. Does anyone know what I mean? The coils I made are 28g kanthal using japanese cotton. I’m assuming the coils the billow came with are kanthal as well. The taste I’m describing isn’t awful, but seems to get in the way of the juice flavor.
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I’ve still got the STOCK coils in the packet for my billow.
I’ve wrapped a standard 26g Kanthal build and flavour to me was blah.
One great flavour build for it (non TC) is 28g Kanthal claptons wrapped with 38g Nichrome80.
I’ve just this second finished building wicking and filling my latest build for the billow v2.
Hold onto your seat for this one.
This is a parallel build.
It’s using 32g Kanthal fused Clapton that’s wrapped in 38g Nichrome 80 with 29g Nichrome 80 in parallel. 6 wraps of the fused Clapton with 5 wraps of 29g NiCr80.
Dual coil on a 2.4mm clocked in at .22ohms.
Great from 20w upwards.
I find a standard build in the billow v2 just about ok.
You could use SS317L wire to get a better flavour from a standard non temp control build.
CMJ
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I believe all, but being I haven’t tried all maybe not, organic cotton, seems to have a taste to it for some reason. This taste will go away though. By your second tank filling it should pretty much be gone. Is this what you’re talking about?
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Yeah that sounds about right. Maybe the coil needs to be broken in and saturated for a bit. I’ve never built coils before, and I’ve been using this coil for literally 15 minutes.
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@ringling has probably hit the nail on the head for you.
Cotton definately has a break in time.
Also did you dry burn and crimp the coils to get them glowing evenly before you wicked them?
If you don’t dry burn them or torch the wire first you could get residual machine oil on the Kanthal.
CMJ
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I don’t really care for the STARTING Taste of the organic cotton much but luckily it’s not literally disgusting. It will go away soon enough, just hang in there…
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Yeah I did dry burn and get them glowing evenly, but I’m so new to this I probably didn’t do it long enough. The taste does seem to be getting weaker as I puff on this thing. I love it though… thinking of all the money I won’t be spending on coils.
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Welcome to the game!!!
The billow is a great purchase.
Before I got mine I was a dripper/coil builder and I can honestly say the flavour is almost as good as a dripper.
My coil building I still love doing as you can see by the pics I posted but now I at least keep the same build in the billow for over a week lol.
Within the hour your cotton should be worn in and giving you good flavour.
If you got your coils glowing before hand then the residual machine oil will have burnt off.
Out of interest what coil did you wrap with the 28g?
Rod diameter and amount of wraps at what ohms?
CMJ
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It was 6 wraps using the screwdriver that came with the billow (which is tiny). It reads .9 ohms. Right now it’s on an istick 30, but at the end of the week I’m getting something higher power so I can take full advantage of the tank. Either an xcube 2 or IPV3 LI.
Also I should add I’m running it single coil because I can’t get 2 coils running with a high enough resistance for my istick to fire.
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Istick 30w that’s a .4ohm minimum resistance.
If you increased the internal diameter of the coil and kept it at 6 wraps you’d get a dual coil around .5-.6ohms.
The little blue driver is about 1.8mm in diameter. I build generally between 2-2.4mm for the billow.
CMJ
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Interesting. There’s still a lot I need to learn. I’ve been playing around on steamengine. I’m gonna try and get this thing dual coil then.
first if all welcome and read around you’ll learn alot here and all coils no matter what kind need to season even the tc ti some of us use NEED TO SEASON like a good cast frying pan
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You can now use the diameter function on steam engine as 1.8mm it will probably increase your wraps to 7 for a dual coil.
CMJ
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Thanks for the help everyone. Making juice and coils is the shit. So much money to be saved, and it’s a pretty fun hobby.
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You do realize, once you’ve gone down the “rabbit hole” of making your own coils, there is no getting out! ; )
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Also, truth be told… as of yet I really don’t know if I have “really” saved too much money as of yet… the more you hang around with the riff-raff here (is that a Rocky Horror analogy?), the more you find out that there is just soooooo much more you want to buy and try… lol scales, and bottles, and maybe a mixer, another dozen flavors to get and possibly send to the poor ol’ island of misfit flavors…, but even if you find your just breaking even, your progressing thru a learning curve with a lot of help.
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lol you might find me hanging by some kanthal wire from the rafters…that might be a little too dark … sorry…
anyway, i got 2 coils setup in this thing reading at .7 ohms. its a very smooth vape so far. i didnt have it wicked properly either, but this time it’s all good. it doesn’t have nearly the amount of “new” coil taste i was talking about before.
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That’s true. The next step is to buy a scale and make some big batches. I just can’t imagine going into my vape shop and shelling out $8 to $22 on a bottle anymore.
A good scale that I believe many on this site have purchased only costs between 10 and 14 dollars, it’s a very good investment, mixing by weight is so nice, if you do decide to purchase one, make sure it reads by 0.01 increments not just 0.1
I purchased This one
I see the price has gone up on it, I purchased it for about 12 dollars a month ago.
It’s still not bad. Cheaper than the one I’ve been looking at:
Does the one you listed not have an auto-off “feature”?