The heating elements in the hairdryer had two different wire gauges as elements. I removed the lighter gauge thinking they would probably draw less current. I am attempting to use 6 volts as that is what my boat is.
1. First Photo: Took a length of element and stretched it out as shown, started with a longer piece about 8". if you are at 12v probably longer. Use some alligator clip jumpers and attached to one end, ran it to negative terminal of my 6v SLA. Took another jumper and attached to a point on the wire, say about 7". JUST TOUCH the other end to the battery positive to see if it glowed, it did not. So just moved about 3/8" at a time till it glowed - See Photo. CAUTION, make certain you have a nonflammable surface to work on, I used a tile scrap. IT GETS HOT FAST AND WILL BURN, DON'T ASK ME HOW I KNOW. That's why I just touch the terminal till it glows then stop, let it cool for a while.
2. Cut element to length, than take your 16 gauge wire and the crimp tube shown in earlier post. insert both into the tube and crimp it. I used a side cutter and carefully just squeezed enough. Make sure that the element will not pull out. Do the other end. Because I am using only 6 volts, I had flattened out the wire to give me more wraps on the wick. See photo and note.
3. in the lid of the box, I located the fan at one end, the exhaust stack at the other.
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ed a hole matching the fan opening and secured with two screws,
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small pilot holes so as not to crack the plastic.
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hole to match brass tube OD, tube is about 1" long or so. Super glued brass tube in place. Excuse the sloppy copper sheet work on the inside of the lid, it was an experiment at the time. I added this a a bit of a heat sheild as the wick and element would sit below this.
4. Next photos show the interior of the box, not the best photos of the process as this was already built.... The mint tin set inside the plastic box was an idea to do two things; first isolate the heating element from the plastic,and two, provide a smaller vessel for the fluid. You may want to just use a metal container instead of the plastic box, again I was just using what I had on hand.
The wick is laying in the tin with the element propped up at on end to keep it out of the fluid. Photo shown does not show much fluid in place. This needs some work, but worked for this test. Experiment, just be sure that the lower portion of the wick is in the fluid and the element wire wrap is above the fluid level.
For the test, I used some mineral oil and a bit of glycerin, smoked very well. it's late so I will run it and photograph tomorrow.
Cheers, Joe
(Excuse the Imperial rather than metric)