Using copper wire as battery contacts?

[fullthrown]

Hi, i'm building a wooden box mod and would really like to use copper wire as battery contacts. From my understanding copper wire can heat up pretty easily. To keep this from happening i was planning on twisting two strands of 22 gauge wire together, making the negative contacts more springy. I was wondering if twisting the copper wire would be a suitable alternative to using regular battery contacts.

[Visus]

Copper makes a horrible contact solution, it will oxidize and anything lower than 12ga will probably just collapse under the battery weight unless you got it flat pressure clip-in battery style mounted.

Most hardware stores carry battery springs, they will be so much better in the long run.

 If you were able to mechanically wipe the prong frequently, copper would be fine.
 In a pinch oh yes lol...

You can read about dirty oxidized contacts all over forums when a poster says my mod heated up and I don't know why.. 
Dc is really dirty when it comes to contacts pitting and  oxidizing --it most definitely eventually will go really bad on ya..

[CraigHB]

Copper has to be plated with a tarnish resistant metal to be used in any kind of contact scenario.  Typically nickel is used but gold alloys and rhodium are better performing plating materials, albeit a lot more expensive.

Spring steel can be an issue for battery contacts in that steel itself is not a particularly good conductor.  It has to have a heavy plate with a good conductor, usually a copper base plate followed by nickel or something better.  For low power applications cheaply plated spring steel contacts are not as much of an issue, but with the high currents that can be encountered powering an atomizer, these issues become much more significant.  This is why people often have problems with the cheap battery holders you find on eBay or from electronics shops.

[fullthrown]

Hm, ok. Thank you for the info. Ill order some keystone contacts fairly soon. I might have to throw some of the cheap-o 18650 holder contacts in for now. They seem to have a fairly heavy spring, although the base itself (if you would even call it that) isn't heavy, its definitely not steal.