Vaping for Beginners - Building Coils – Your First Coil Build
The thinner the wire, the higher the resistance (ohms) – thin wire just has one tiny drawback: it’s harder to wrap. That’s why I’d recommend starting your first coils with classic Kanthal. Sure, you’ll be vaping at a higher resistance, around 1.2 ohms, but the coil is much easier to get right. As a beginner, it really does make a difference whether you’re doing your wraps with Kanthal or with nickel.
Now for the actual coil building: the more wraps you make with the wire, the larger the surface area for the cotton – and the better the flavour is supposed to be. Of course, there’s a practical limit: you still need to be able to fit your coil into the atomizer.
So let’s try the simplest coil build. Using the Kanthal and your coil-building kit (or the nail), make 6 wraps. Just wrap the wire 6 times side by side. Important – the wraps shouldn’t touch, so leave a small gap between them. If you can’t manage 6 wraps, no problem: go with five – you’ll get the hang of it later. Now secure the ends in the atomizer and snip off the excess! Important: the coil shouldn’t touch the atomizer deck. Thread a piece of cotton under the coil – done!
Screw the atomizer onto an ohm meter or a mod and check the resistance of your coil.
And then suddenly it tastes burnt – once the coil has had some use, you’ll need to replace the cotton and clean the coil. To do that, remove the old cotton and dry-burn the coil to get rid of old e-liquid residue and gunk. Pull fresh cotton through, and you’re done. How often you need a new coil ultimately depends on how you vape. Sweet e-liquids in particular gunk up the coil more, so you’ll need to rebuild more often.
Next week, we’ll look at calculating coil wire and some other coil builds that are a bit more creative than this beginner build.
