If you’re sick of battling hot spots, getting dry hits, or just plain bored on a Sunday (like I was), then here’s a build for the AGA-T2 that you might want to consider: ditch the SS mesh / rope for good ol’ silica!
After several videos of people setting up silica in the AGA-T2 many moons ago, I had run this setup in the past, but I didn’t stick with it all that long. However, after last night’s success, I reckon that silica wick could be taking up residence in this versatile little atty.
The setup was relatively no fuss, and I went from start to finish in under 10 minutes. It’s a cloud machine, but like all most things silica, I found that flavor reproduction was top notch.
Story continues after the jump.
Built to accommodate traditional styled SS mesh / rope setups and silica setups, setting up silica on the AGA-T2 is a breeze. All I needed for this build were:
1) A length of silica wick (3.0mm silica)
2) A length of kanthal (30 awg kanthal)
3) An AGA-T2
4) Miscellaneous recoiling tools (wire cutter, pliers)
Folding one end of my wick over, I proceeded to make a coil over a needle. I usually go for 5/6 wraps on mesh, but since the folded over silica was thicker than my usual mesh wicks, I went for a 4/5 wrap this time.
Happy with the coil, then proceeded to the most time consuming part of the build, which was slipping the wick into the tank. Silica is soft by nature, and forcibly jamming it into the wick hole with a screw driver will give you more grief than joy, because it would most probably cause the wick to unravel and muck things up.
Instead, I dabbed a little eliquid on the end and twisted the end tighter together.
With that part done, I proceeded to wire up the coil by slotting the negative end into the post (yes, that’s what this post is for), and the positive end around the center post.
I tried to get my coil sitting upright and made quite a meal of my coils in the process. I tried to space them out evenly again and ended up with this mess. I reckon that this is because the coils were rather loose over the silica due to the needle that I used for support. You could probably avoid having to readjust the coils if you pull the kanthal tight over the silica, but be careful not to choke the wicks!
Like a dripper setup, you want to make sure that all your coils are glowing evenly too. Isolating hot spots and adjusting spacing on silica is much easier than doing it on mesh, and this only took me about a minute or so to get sorted.
All there’s left to do now is fill up your tank with some liquid and puff away!
As you can see from this video, wicking was never a problem. I set it up in a way that the silica tail was always sitting in the eliquid, and is constantly feeding the top coil.
I also have seen a build that doesn’t utilize a tail, and has the silica coil sitting on top in the same way that you’d coil a dripper. In this fashion, you’ll need to tilt the tank and feed the coil directly from the leaking eliquid that comes out of the wick hole.
Vapor production on this setup was pretty good too. At 4/5 wraps, I’m estimating the coil to be in the low 1ohm region, but even with a good amount of chain vaping the top cap didn’t get too hot.
Part of the reason why I wanted the coil to sit vertically instead of horizontally was so I could use it with my custom reduced chamber top cap, but if you’re running the silica build with a regular top cap, you can lay the coil any way you want and get the same results.
Flavor wise, silica wick definitely gives a much stronger kick than stainless steel mesh. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that I got as much flavor out of this build as I would on my IGO-L dripper. I mean, this is essentially the same build except I’m getting my eliquid bottom fed from a 3ml reservoir.
So, if you have some time and an inch of silica wick to spare, do give this a go. Let me know how you like it!
Vaping with Wern 
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