Smok Beasts -day of a noob

Right, 12 hours in and I think I’m ready to call it good for the next week. I’ll try again next weekend.

I got a TFV8 RBA, didn’t come with the glass, and possibly that glass wan’t right for the Big Baby Beast anyway? I dunno, but ordered replacement RBA glass for the Big Baby Beast – so if Ebay ain’t lying to me that’ll be fixed in a week or so.

The TFV12 RBA-T I tried with the starting claptons, I wasn’t sure about it, and then I put a flavour that turned out to just be nasty anyway in there. I do know it took me 6 tries to get it wicked properly, nothing but dry hits the first tries. Finally figured out I could just match the width of the cotton to the atty before cutting, fixed the totally random guesswork there.

TFV12 RBA – Tried it with a single-coil I wrapped from pre-made hive wire. At .44 ohms I didn’t find a wattage it was at all satisfying at. Now running dual-coil 24Ga Kanthal a1 – 6 wraps I think?, not 100% sure I did it right XD .301ohms at 60 watts. It’s interesting, seems very comparable to the M2-Q TFV8 at 90-ish watts.

Obviously I had some other failures in there, various problems and plenty of readning/watching YT to fill up 12 whole hours.

I can tell you this tho, this was not like, a sane decision. It’s just this big flat brick wall you smash your face into – and I can see a learning curve up there somewhere, but I’m just not sure how high I have to jump before I can walk up that XD.

Keep at it. Rebuilding and wicking is an art. It takes practice but once you get the feel for it you should have no problem moving to another tank or rda. I know it sounds like that’s never going to happen but it will.

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Oh all skills are acquirable for sure – I’m just having a hard time finding a good source of each little issue I’m having. Like wicking, the universal advice seems to be “No too much or too little”. . .thank you >.> XD

Things like wrap number and inner hole diameter (which jig to use) are fairly straight forward – do maths to find the goal ohms, and my G150 has all the requisite protections to be reasonably safe going for sub-ohm builds. But what about “What exactly should I be going for if I want the best insta-heat vape with good flavour, and the atty doesn’t continue to produce vapour because it takes too long to cool down?”

There’s obvious things like “Claptons heat more slowly but hold more total heat”, but what about what “Should I try spacing my coil out or keeping the wraps close together?” or "Just how the hell do I copy what my favourite store-bought atty does? It’s a weird one. …how do I wrap so the coil sits vertical so the openings of the coil are up and down and you wrap the cotton around the coil? " or “What’s with my coils making that popping sound. . .am I heating the juice so fast that some it is actually burning/turning gaseous rather than vapourising?” And I have no idea how temp control works. . .

All are things you can find out thru experimentation – but ‘downloading’ the experience of others can short-circuit skill growth such that you can effectively skip several intermediate levels of understanding and skill with the knowledge gained by others as . . .why am I taking this metaphor all the way . . .Whatever :stuck_out_tongue:

All that said, as I originally said, I’ll give it more practice this weekend. And at least one weekend day a week until I ‘git gud’. Especially because I’m sure all my questions have answers posted as well as that I can find myself – I just need to spend more time looking.

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This is gonna be my new mantra :+1::smiley:

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Actually, as soon as I lost the thought of “this is complicated” and “it has to be perfect” recoiling has gotten extremely fun. My stuff maybe won’t win a coil beauty pageant but it vapes and tastes pretty good :smiley:
And it didn’t take me tons of practice either. Works, that’s all I need ^^

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I almost gave up and went back to sub ohm tanks with disposable coils but I stuck to it. A year later and now I can build and wick any atomizer without even looking up a youtube tutorial. I can just tell by looking at the deck, chamber and juice channels what will work. It’s hard to teach someone though because with time you just get a feel for how much cotton is enough or how many wraps will fit best.

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Wicking is definitely a skill that require hands on experience to get down properly. Creating wire builds falls along the same line, you can watch vids and ask questions (get some good tips and shortcuts too), but at the end of the day, you still have to teach your hands to do it. Wire selection and what not we can help with though lol.
Kanthal has a good ramp up and down (most premade coils are kanthal I believe). Stainless steel has a slow ramp up and down (holds heat longer), and nichrome has that uber fast ramp up and down. Perusing through steam-engine.org and playing around with the wire types will show you this as well.

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I got a TFV12 RBA-T build I’ve enjoyed all day today, so, success! The flavour’s kinda crap, gonna google about that tomorrow >.> but the vapour is right and no bad taste an no extreme popping so ha. I did the wicking right at least.

Oh, and ordered an Azeroth RTA clone plus the very thoroughly reviewed Velocity RDA clone as well from fasttech (don’t have to worry about breaking/not liking cheap stuff)-- the RDA especially as something to practice on with less mess trying to deal with a half-full tank on trying rapid-fire build practice. Err. . .in a couple weeks anyway :stuck_out_tongue: But it took me like 3 weeks to decide to even try buying an RBA to begin with, I got patience for this.

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I FUCKING DID IT!





And yes, I now totally believe self-built taste better and produce better vapour. You just have to do it right.

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Congrats. It takes a lot if time and devotion to making it right for you. He’ll the many frustrated hours in the beginning makes what I do now all worth it in the end. I only use rebuildables now. I live it. A suggestion for you if looking for flavor is an RDTA. Take some time to get used to, but the Ijoy Limitless Combo is a beaut. Also the Avacodo 24 with out the window is a fav of mine.

Just keep at it.