If that’s the same cotton after a month how do you sleep it so clean?
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I have gotten twice now like a ball of something and it is like ashy when I touch it . After that happens the cotton is pretty dark after about 2 weeks. I’m using the solomon v1 at .4 ohm Clapton dual coil using cotton bacon. At 35 watts and 3.7 volts. I am getting better at wicking though at least this time it didn’t take me 20 minutes to put the glass back on the deck
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I’ve seen that over time when Sucralose is not the culprit… I suspect as the cotton ages, it varies in saturation levels (can happen as a result of chain vaping once in a while or maybe even thicker juice taking longer to wick in). Over the course of time, say two weeks on your case, that’s a lot of vape cycles. The cotton gradually ages and singes during the times when it’s less saturated and that causes little dry bits to burn off and travel. My solution is to re-wick sooner, simple as that. So maybe I can push 10-14 days out of a build before it tastes bad, but by that time I’ll probably have ashey-little-uglies moving in. So, I just don’t let it happen. Cutting build longevity in half really isn’t a bad thing. When they’re cycled shorter, they are much easier to clean and the build goes a lot faster for me.
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my goal is to maxine the coil life and the cotton life i just replaced the coils because the one was bent which was my fault and i don’t mind rewicking more often. I’m glad i now know what the problem was and it was a common issue. I’m really new at the diy stuff. long time vapor short time vape coil juice maker. just don’t know everything yet but learning. that’\s another reason i love this site. never gotten so many answers in such a short time before ELR.
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Even if you didn’t put sucralose or any kind of “extra” sweetener into your juice, doesn’t mean there is none in it.
Lots of flavors and especially from the cheaper brands contain it already.
Example strawberry ripe by tfa contains a truck load of EM just by itself, that is a great coil gunker and won’t need much help from its friends, but mostly nobody uses this flavor alone and it’s always paired with more “sweet” flavors, making it just worst.
Again not the only flavor that does this, but it’s ok, if coils are cleaned (dry burned) frequently. I clean my coils at least every week, sometimes earlier due to my extreme OCD, that will keep them in good shape and clean.
If I would go by cotton looks, I probably could use my coils for 3 months, because my cotton never looks “brown/bad/gunked” or broke etc but my coils wouldn’t agree.
These little black particles you are calling ash can’t be great to inhale. Just clean them a bit more often and be mindful of flavors and profiles you’re using, that would be my suggestion.
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Hey now Peter Pan PB is my favorite, especially the honey roasted.
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Hell yeah!! But Sucralose!!! 
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No problem…cotton is cheap.
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I have recently been noticing the ashy flakes more that find their way up the chamber and into drip tips lately. I recall coils only gunking up badly but this appears to flake off easier. While the coils dont appear as bad as when i used to decide to clean them, the flakes u can taste and are harsher then just a foul arse coil. I almost never use sweetener but am constantly trying new mixes and switching rdas so is tough to pinpoint what flavoring might cause it. In the last few months i have switched to salts tho and am thinking this may be why the gunk flakes off so easy.
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Regular Cotton Bacon V2. I’ve had it for about a month, but I also have other equipment… it had about 100ml of juice through it. Mostly a mix of RY4D, Red Burley and Shisha Vanilla.
I rested the cotton on some paper towel which sucked most of the remaining liquid out of it.
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Dry burning means I just have to replace the otton weekly. That way the coil can last a lot longer ?
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I have not remade any of my juices yet. I have a few I really like but I’m still on the 3 component setup. I kinda. Nervous about bring more complex juices yet. I never had this problem with my crown 3
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My coils tend to pop and crackle a lot (little explosions from time to time), maybe that has something to do with the flakes coming off. I’ve seen coil pics of coils with big fat layers of gunk without seeing any of those flakes on the cotton.
I’m starting to think it’s inherent to SS coils I’m using because I never have that so badly when I use Ka or NiCr coils (which I almost never do because I love my TC)
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The problem I have with dry burning (especially with wire that isn’t round) is that you can never get it completely clean. There will always be black stuff in between the clapton wire, between the cores, … and when you clean and re-use coils, the time between cleans becomes shorter and shorter.
If you make your coils yourself, they’re just as cheap as cotton, so just replace. Cleaning costs as much time as making a coil.
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Dry burning is just burning the gunk off the coil, but yes if you dry burn you should get a longer wick life. If you are using sweet juices though you may still just get 3 days or so. Juice, wattage, and af all affect wick life.Hell pretty much everything can affect wick life. You just have to find a balance you can live with.
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which is what i am used to seeing but these flakes appear new to me. I can rule out the s.s since ive only experimented w/ s.s and this happens w/ k1 and i dont have any probs w/ spitting
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When I dry burning I also get the coils hot and hit them with a little bit of water which seems to help get in between the wraps
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Ohh, dunk that whole thing in there, Still attached to mod, get em warm and dunk in glass of water and u see it flake off. Do this till you are satisfied then take off mod and rinse it out really good to get flakes outta tank or deck.
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I’ve tried it, 8, 9, 10 times… white hot, rins off under the tap and repeat. Outside looking cleanish, pull the cotton through and still see some gunk on the new white wick. I’ve tried it in a bowl of water too, same difference.
I understand a lot of people like to do it but I really can’t be bothered. Cleaning takes time as well and I make coils by the meter, nearly fully automated 
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Funny that you’re mentioning this, because yesterday I put one of my “new” mixes in my tank. Never tried that combo before, after half the tank I tasted a extreme muting of the juice but didn’t think any of it.
So I went on with my life, taking couple hits here and there, refilling tank etc. By the evening I couldn’t taste anything and it felt like my coils weren’t even firing, opened my tank and my coils looked like yours, maybe even worse.
Was very surprising because I just re did them prior of vaping my red burley mix, mine only contains .25% of it.
I’ll have to play around with it in the next days, see if it’s that flavor in particular or the none mtl wattage/temperature that causes this in combo with this particular flavor.
I use SS coils too, so I thought I share.
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