Designing a low-temperature furnace for melting metals
You can buy roving-woven thin glass fiber matting very easily and cheaply these days just about everywhere, if you wrap that tightly around the metal can, then hold it in place by wrapping the resistive wire tightly around it you will have a crude-ish set up that will sort of work.

The glass fiber will insulate to a degree, so you will want to fill it with a low-viscosity (ceramic) clay, that will penetrate the fiber and create better contact. This is probably the best balance between doable and good contact, AFAIK.

You can roll any number of thermocouples under the glass matting, provided they are in some way insulated, if they aren't you should put them between a small overlap at the edge of your matting cylinder.