THC Blaze Solo RTA
Antony got his hands on the Thunderhead Creations Blaze Solo RTA, a really nice single coil tank which seemed to hit the spot nicely
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by Antony Lord
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Thunderhead Creations and Mike Vapes continue their recent run of collaborations with the new Blaze Solo rta, a single coil version of the dual coil Blaze rta. Whilst I was a big fan Blaze rta, I wasn’t quite as enamoured with the Blaze Solo rda which was far too airy for my liking, so with this in mind, I was hoping that this would be good like the earlier rta whilst simultaneously worrying it might end up being all air and no trousers like the rda! Luckily our friends over at Sourcemore were kind enough to send this over for review so I could find out for myself.
Specifications
- 25mm diameter
- 38.5mm tall (excluding 510 and drip tip)
- 3.5ml straight glass / 5.5ml bubble glass
- Quarter turn top fill
- Single coil “W” build deck
- Leak resistant top airflow design
- Honeycomb side and slotted bottom airflow
The Blaze Solo rta comes in a nice windowed presentation box so you can see your chosen colour on the shelf. Mine came in a lovely gunmetal but you also have blue, gold, black and stainless steel to choose from. In the box you also get a bubble glass, small instruction booklet, a coil cutting guide, spares baggie, two fused claptons, plus cotton.
Out of the box the Blaze Solo rta comes with a 3.5ml straight glass installed, you also have a 5.5ml bubble glass included and swapping the two over is easily achieved by removing the base and releasing the glass from the retaining O-ring at the top of the tank. This is 24.6mm wide with the straight glass installed and just 28.8mm with the bubble glass so I opted to go for the larger capacity here. The base tapers off to just 23.7mm and it’s quite stubby as well coming in at just 38.5mm tall excluding the 510 connection and drip tip. Design wise I’m loving the bold cut-outs at the top and bottom of the tank which help break up the design whilst also adding some additional grip on the sections where they are most needed.
The top airflow now features a honeycomb design unlike the wide open ports on the Blaze rta for smoother airflow. This features hard stops at the fully open and fully closed positions and although there are strong vertical lines cut into the side, this can still sometimes be a bit tricky to get a decent grip of for finer adjustment. On the plus side, once you have the airflow set to your liking, it’s unlikely to get moved by accident except when removing the top cap for filling which is a problem common to most top airflow tanks and something I’ve found myself doing more than once here as well.
With the top cap removed, you have access to two large kidney shaped fill ports and it’s nice to see a convenient quarter turn bayonet system in use. One criticism I had with both the Blaze rta and the Blaze Solo rda is that although they advertised a “810 drip tip”, these were a in fact a non-standard size being a little too small, and I’m happy to say that this has now been corrected on the Blaze Solo rta. The design of the drip tip is identical, but it is now a standard 810 fitting, this means that should you lose the drip tip, you won’t be up shit creek without a paddle and can simply use any of your other 810 drip tips!
The build deck and inner chimney/airflow are both removable from the outer chimney. At first I thought that the inner chimney was press fit into the outer chamber, but it’s simply held in place by a very tight O-ring which is probably a good thing helping direct the airflow where it’s supposed to go whilst still allowing you to strip things down for a thorough deep clean.
The build deck has fourteen honeycomb side airflow holes (seven on each side) plus a large bottom airflow slot below this which is angled up towards the bottom of your coil, this is further enhanced by the “W” shaped build deck which is supposed to help direct that lower airflow underneath your coil. As with the Blaze rta, the inner chamber simply slots over the build deck to separate the inner and outer chambers and direct the airflow where it is needed.
Thunderhead Creations did include two rather nice looking four core fused claptons in the box, but as usual these are Nichrome which means they aren’t suitable for people with nickel sensitivity problems like me, so I had to go hunting through my collection of random coils for a roughly equivalent Kanthal coil because I didn’t have the time to start making a coil from scratch on this occasion.
The included coil cutting guide suggested a leg length of 6mm and this seemed just about perfect with a 3mm inner diameter coil. Fitting was easy with the postless deck design so you shouldn’t have any issues with coils wound in either direction, just straighten things up once you’re done and you’re all set to go.
For the wicking, I pushed the cotton down towards the base of the build deck and cut where the two met. This resulted in quite a long wick as shown and as it happens, this was barely enough and I ended up using the dam method with the tails of the wick just about reaching the fairly large wicking ports at the base. This worked well enough but after a couple of days of use, once the cotton began to shrink a little, it quickly turned into a disaster with a rapidly flooding deck… I can confidently report that you can in fact make a top airflow rta leak! For my second attempt, I cut the wicks even further out then gave the ends a diamond cut so that at least some of the wick was poking through the ports below and this has worked flawlessly ever since.
With my build coming out at 0.25 ohms, I was getting a really nice flavour packed vape at 58 watts with three of the eight airflow ports open to add just a touch of restriction to the draw. It’s obviously not going to be as intense a vape as the dual coil Blaze rta, but the Blaze Solo rta can definitely hold its own and performs extremely well and is definitely something I will continue to use.
Pros
- Finally has a proper 810 drip tip!
- Easy to build
- Great Flavour
Cons
- Can be tricky to get the wicking right
- Airflow ring can be difficult to adjust
Conclusion
Whenever Mike Vapes is involved in a project, you know that you’ll most likely have a good product on hand, and the Thunderhead Creations Blaze Solo rta continues this trend. A nice compact single coil rta in this day and age of disposables and pod mods is a refreshing change, and this can hold its head up high with a nice flavourful vape once you get the hang of the wicking.
Many thanks to Sourcemore for sending the Thunderhead Creations Blaze Solo rta over for review.
Antony Lord
Reviewer at POTVI was a twenty a day smoker for 25 years and like most smokers I was always going to quit "next week". Having hit my mid forties and having the usual smokers cough and difficulty with anything more than moderate exercise it was obviously time to give up the cancer sticks. I bought my first e-cigarette in 2013 when they were expensive, difficult to find and quite frankly... crap. I used it for about a week then went back to the roll ups, mark up another failed quit attempt. The fact that I had just changed jobs and was under quite a lot of stress probably didn't help. Move on to 2016 and whilst I was browsing eBay I noticed that one of the suggested items that would occasionally pop up was for a cheap e-cigarette. It looked similar to the one I'd bought 3 years earlier but it was only £5 (about 8 times cheaper than before) so I decided to give it another go on a whim. Once the kit arrived I managed to gradually replace the cigarettes with my new kit over a two month period and got into watching YouTube reviews for newer kit. My cheap and cheerful kit was replaced by a more upmarket affair, and being a noob I made a mistake once it arrived... I put in the supplied direct lung coil, this was of course a complete revelation and I haven't touched a cigarette since. Oh and I no longer spend the first five minutes of every day having a coughing fit either.
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