The Best Coil Builds For Cloud Chasing Vapers

Are you looking for the best cloud chasing coil builds to upgrade your vaping game? The holy grail of vaping is to achieve huge vaping clouds, but that’s easier said than done without any experience.

For vapers in the know, the combination of strong batteries, the right vape juice, and carefully designed coils results in huge vape releases over short bursts. It’s the perfect mixture to get big clouds, and there is more than one coil build that does the trick.

In this article, you’ll learn about the most effective vape builds for creating the biggest clouds yet. You’ll also learn how to maintain your coils so that you can keep on vaping without any downtime.

How Cloud Vaping Started and Why it Has Become a Sport

Cloud vaping looks cool, and it’s hard to pinpoint the exact origins of how it started. Several people likely popularized cloud vaping at the same time. Cloud chasing is a big reason why people get started with vaping in the first place. Some believe cloud chasing gives vapers a bad reputation, while others consider it part of the culture.

Cloud chasing started as a bit of fun. However, now vapers compete worldwide to see who can create the biggest clouds with the thickest smoke. Some competitions don’t offer more than bragging rights, while others offer thousands of dollars for the top places.

The sport has become so popular that it is now a subculture of vaping. Your clouds will only be as good as your coils. You’ll need to learn more about how coils impact vape clouds and the ones you should be using.

Vape Coil Tips for Bigger Clouds

Want to know what factors determine the quality of a vape cloud? The features below are worth looking at when designing your coils. This list is great for beginners, but experienced vapers can also take a quick look to brush up on their knowledge.

• High VG percentage: Use high Vegetable Glycerin (VG) liquid with at least 50% potency. You’ll make the bigger clouds with high percentage VG juice than a Propylene-Glycol (PG) dominate mix. You can’t skip this part and expect the best results.
• Clean your coil: Coil personal hygiene is important to ensure there is no build-up of gunk that could potentially block your vape. Build-up results in smaller clouds. Therefore, it doesn't matter how great your vape coil design is—you still need to clean it out regularly using cotton wicks. Make sure to clean the coils when they are at room temperature.
• Two is better than one: Dual coils increase the coil surface area, vaporizing more e-liquid at a time. Therefore, you’ll achieve bigger clouds with dual coils—it makes a big difference.
• Opt for low resistance coils: Low resistance coils heat up faster, which means the clouds are bigger. Look for a low AWG number when purchasing a coil.
• Bigger surface area: Opt for coils that have the biggest surface area possible to achieve the biggest clouds. You may find that some coils decrease flavor, yet the clouds are bigger. In such instances, you’ll need to prioritize what’s more important to you. If you are competing, you might consider one vape for personal use, and one for vape competitions.

The Staple Coil

Staple coils are characterized by a thin gauge tightly wrapped around ten flat ribbon wires. It’s a similar alternative to the Clapton coil design, but this coil decreases the amount of time taken to get started. The stacked ribbon cores maximize the efficiency of the coil design.

You’ll enjoy an enhanced flavor with a Staple coil because of the tiny grooves that wrap the e-juice. This design originates from the idea of improved aesthetics. The coil looks like a row of staples, hence the name.

Here is an overview of what a staple coil features:

• The clouds are harder to manufacture than with Clapton, but with a bit of practice, you can get it right every time
• The ramp-up is faster compared to Clapton coils with the same resistance
• The thin outer strand is wrapped around 8 to 10 stacked ribbon cores
• The coil looks like a row of staples
• You can choose a low resistance staple coil for the best cloud results

Clapton Coil

The Clapton coil is a thin gauge wrapped around a thicker core. They have a slower ramp-up time compared to staple coils but are known to provide more flavor. That’s because the bigger surface area allows for a bigger release of vape—and that’s where all the flavor is.

Previously Clapton coils were utilized for direct lung vaping and sub-ohming. However, they are now one of the standards for mouth-to-lung vaping. The huge surface area means you can get massive clouds.

It’s not out of the question to make your own Clapton coil. However, it takes a lot of work compared to most other coil types. Fortunately, Clapton coils are one of the most commonly available options at vape shops.

An E-Cigarette Forum (EFC) veteran created this coil type when a friend was playing the guitar. He wrapped a 32-gauge strand around a 24-gauge core with the help of an electric drill. Ever wondered why this coil type is named Clapton? It’s in recognition of the guitarist Eric Clapton.

Here is an overview of the Clapton coil features:

• Difficult to build yourself but becomes easier with practice
• Slow ramp-up time compared to single-strand designs
• You can choose a temperature control wire or power mode
• Good choice of diameters and resistances, giving you freedom of choice when building to obtain the best clouds

Fused Clapton Coil

This variation of the Clapton coil uses a thinner-gauge design wrapped around 2+ thicker gauge cores. The ramp-up time and flavor of this coil are increased compared to a regular Clapton because the surface area is much greater.

The term “fused” in this case refers to the wrapping of several wires with the outer one being thinner. The design of this best cloud chasing build originates from Squidoode—a coil builder.

Here are a few common features of fused Clapton coils:

• Harder to DIY compared to the standard Clapton coils, but it’s not an insurmountable obstacle
• Ramp-up time is faster because of the increased surface area, and the flavor’s better, too
• 2+ parallel cores with thin wire wrapped around them
• Various diameters and resistance to choose from when building fused Clapton coils
• Ideal for both direct-to-lung (DL) and mouth-to-lung (MTL) vaping

Staggered Fused Clapton

Want to get fancy with your Clapton coil build? Consider a staggered fused Clapton build, which consists of thin wire wrapped around a double Clapton core. The design increases the texture and surface area. Consequently, the flavor is slightly better than the standard fused design, but the ramp-up time is slower.

The use of two parallel strands that are removed and replaced with a Clapton form the basis of the staggered effect. Additionally, the Clapton is halved and combined with thinner wire. Squidoode is also given credit for coming up with the staggered Clapton coil design.

Here are a few features of the staggered fused Clapton design:

• These are trickier to DIY than a regular fused Clapton coil
• Slower ramp-up time compared to similar fused Clapton using the same resistance wire
• Built using two parallel cores with a thin wire wrapped around them and evenly spaced outer wraps
• The fused Claptons are thick, so larger post holes are needed
• For direct lung vaping, you can opt for low resistance staggered fused Claptons

Twisted Coils

Here, two wires of the same gauge are twisted to form one wire, which increases the surface area and, in turn, the vape production. The flavor intensity is also enhanced, but not quite to the same level as most Clapton builds.

Twisted coils have the advantage of needing less wattage, and the ramp-up time is faster. You can even opt for a quad coil setup that increases the surface area further. It’s possible to create twisted coil designs yourself. However, it gets harder when you choose thicker wires.

Discovering the Secret to Bigger Vape Clouds

The best cloud chasing coil builds in this article are just some of the top ideas to consider. Continue searching, and you’ll find that the rabbit hole goes much deeper. You can build a coil yourself or buy from a reputable vendor.

Remember to look at the factors that determine the size and quality of a vape cloud. Use that as a guide to choose the coil that gives you the best result. Experience is the best way to maximize your vape cloud size and quality.

You may need to try out every type of coil build in this article to figure out what works best for you as no two vapers will get the same results. You can also experiment with different juice types in each coil build. However, we do recommend sticking with high VG blends.

Above all, though, remember to enjoy yourself—vaping is about more than the size of your cloud.