Cage type secondary former

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Stephen Conner by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <steve-at-scopeboy-dot-com>

Dear list,

I've been wracking my brains to try and find a suitable former for my OLTC 
secondary. I was looking for a thin walled plastic pipe 10" dia x 30" long. 
Then I thought, why do I need to use a large pipe at all? I could make a 
round cage-like structure from a number of 30" long PVC drain pipes and a 
top/bottom/stiffening plates made out of PVC or wood.

I'm not sure if this would work, though. On the plus side it might have 
lower losses since the winding is mostly in air. On the minus side though, 
the field control might be poor because it's not perfectly circular and 
there's no way to fit baffles. Mind you, I noticed Bill Wysock's Super 
Model 13M used a secondary/extra coil wound on a wooden cage and it seemed 
to perform reasonably well &) However, just because it works for a 30 foot 
tall 700 turn extra coil doesn't mean it'll work on mine... Has anyone ever 
tried an open frame secondary like this on a more realistically sized coil? 
How did it go? Was it a pig to wind?

TIA

Steve C.