Kanthol vs. Stainless steel

I am getting ready to order some more wire, and usually like to order in pretty large bulk. Looking for some opinions of kanthol vs. Stainless steel. I have never tried stainless, and was wondering about thoughts on it vs. Kanthol?

 

Stainless lasts longer. If you have a build you like and want to keep it, I'd say go with stainless. I've opened up dirty decks that were laying around forever and just rinsed and dry burned and the coil was good as new. Just don't dry burn at high power. I find most of my ss coils can be dry burned at about 20w or so.

The resistance is about half that of kanthal so you'll need a bit more wraps for the same resistance as kanthal would give you. It works well with bigger I.D.s because you can get the extra length with less wraps.

You can use it on your TC devices in 316 mode. Space your coils for TC.

Some people say the flavor is more crisp but I guess that's subjective.

Kanthal still serves it's purpose for certain builds but I personally have been using more ss for it's "dual personality" (wattage and TC modes).

I'm sure you'll get more feedback from someone else, I have to say nitey nite.

 

Thanks, I was wondering about resistance? I have no plan of using ss in temp mode, so kinda sounds like you don't think it is worth the switch then? Also, I knew resistance was lower, but did not realize so much. Does it come in different gauges? I guess I mean in general, if one of my standard builds is 26g Kanthol, 3mm, duel 5 wraps for about .3 ohms, can I buy ss to match that, or am I going to have to go 10 wraps to get the same build?

 

It would take about 8 wraps of ss to get the same resistance (it's not exactly half of kanthal). It will give you more wick coverage; you can look at it that way. More coverage, more vapor/flavor. That's why N80 became popular.

It comes in all gauges and clapton wire, too.

I like using it for my single coil builds. You might want to use it in your KFs, Russians. 8 wraps will get you .5 ohms with 2.5 ID for instance. Or use a higher gauge with less wraps (28g will give you the same .5 ohms with 5 wraps). Just some examples.....

My first experience with a ss coil was the prebuilt vertical coil in the first Crown Tank and it was pretty tasty for a tank. After that I figured why not build my own on it's RBA deck. Then I started using it on all my single coil builds.

Most regulated mods can handle low resistance these days. As for tubes/mechs, I might still use kanthal. It all depends on what your battery can handle and the build. I always played it safe and never went below .2 ohms on my mechs.

Well, that's my story. Everyone has their own style and way of doing things. You won't know until you try. I never said it wasn't worth it.

 

Thanks for all the info @muth , I went ahead and orderd different than normal. I usually get large spools of what I normally use, instead I got a lot of smaller spools of various gauges to try. I am excited to give ss a try. Thanks again