Interesting topic ... I particularly enjoy the threads that raise questions about what we do when we're building and why we do these things. We're creatures of habit and sometimes carry on doing something which is having no actual benefit, we apply reasoning behind one action to justify doing the same thing in another context. Throw in the stuff we don't know and the picture becomes more complex, behaviours vary according to how we react to unknown risks.
Prepping wires
I used to anneal kanthal before building a coil with it, it made the wire more workable, less springy and burned off any residues. But I stopped doing that after a while, mainly because I had moved on to using thicker gauges which weren't so springy, and the cleaning off of residues was better done after I'd made the coil since it would be picking up sebum (skin oils) during that process anyway. Nowadays I use kanthal and TC wires, some of these metals shouldn't be annealed but what I do now is clean them with alcohol wipes. I clean them all now, just out of habit even though only Titanium seems to leave visible marks on the wipes.
Torching a coil
I used to do this a lot with kanthal, particularly with microcoils, so that the wire would retain its shape better during the stresses of installing it on the deck. I've just changed a straight wire into a spring, I've changed its nature and this annealing seemed to be beneficial, it also burnt off sebum and residues which I had previously done whilst prepping but stopped doing. I haven't been torching TC coils as its very difficult to control the heat and stop them glowing ... I don't want these metals to be glowing. Maybe NiFe30 is an exception ... I'm not sure.
Tuning the coil
After installing a coil I want to check that it's going to fire ok, before I move onto wicking it. This tells me that I've got good connections, not hot legs, no hot spots, that it heats up evenly and as expected. With kanthal this was never a problem, in fact it seemed essential for microcoils ... a little strumming, some gentle squeezing with ceramic tweezers ... for me this had good results in terms of settling the build down for want of a better expression. I wasn't ever building spaced coils until I got into TC.
Tuning a TC coil seems to be particular to the metal ... just about a no no for Ni200 ... a very careful process with Titanium ... and yippee, back to kanthal practices with NiFe30!
I gave up building microcoils with TC so the squeezing with tweezers went out but I carried on with gentle strumming to settle the new coils down. Why ... well, why not? What could be the possible harm of giving the spaced coil a gentle strum? Maybe this is an entirely unnecessary thing to do ... but maybe it does help with settling the coils down. It seems to.
In truth, I don't understand what strumming does, I just learned that it works almost magically.
Dry burning a coil
I've done this with kanthal ever since I started vaping with Kanger clearos ... take out the old cotton wick, rinse and dry burn the coil, let it cool, brush off the ash residue, install the new wick. This carried on through rebuildables. Kanthal coils are pretty robust and I wanted to freshen up the coil before rewicking. I never had very badly gunked up coils, it's not like I was picking away at them as I understood other vapers did ... the mingers!
Kanthal builds lasted weeks and months.
With TC this changed, dry burning was out for Ni200 and Titanium, coils just didn't last as long and gunking seemed to impair performance. So it resulted in lots of rebuilding.
Then Niffy came along and dry burning was back! Hooray! Rinse, dry burn to a light glow, a cool down then brush off the ash ... a fresh coil ready for a new wick.
Happy days or not? Maybe Dr Farsalinos will tell us all this glowing metal is killing us?
