Inductor - Ballast

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Original poster: Kidd6488@xxxxxxx 

Hey everyone, It's been, dang probably like 2 or 3 years since I've been on 
here. (Jonathon Reinhart, If you don't recall) Haven't really done anything 
with coiling lately - girls, job - they all get in the way...

Anyways, I wanted to maybe mess around with coiling a little bit lately, 
and was feeling somewhat constructive.  Ok, So I've got 3 or 4 MOTs layin 
around, and I'm not sure which ones work or not, and right now I pretty 
much just want to play around with them before I incorporate them into a 
coil setup. Now in order to 'play' with these I know you need some 
ballasting (and I think fuses as well :-) )  My easy way to series things: 
I made a standard extension cord with a handybox and outlet on the end, but 
I broke jumper tabs on the outlet and wired them in series (hot 
in;  nuetral out > hot in2;  nuetral out2).  So then I just plug my ballast 
into one socket and my mot(s) into the other.

Now as far as ballasting goes... I might try a few things and see what I like:
~  Bunch of light bulbs - I've got all kinds of lamp sockets around, and a 
few 250 or 500W bulbs... This should give me somethin to play with right?
~  Water heater - We replaced our water heater and the old one is just 
sitting outside - the elements should do pretty good right? Any 
recommendations there?
~  Inductor - So I already made one, and haven't tried it yet.  I took 
about 8 bolts, about 1/2" or 5/8" diameter, and about 6" long... bundled 
them up, and wrapped them up with rubber electrical tape. Then I took 3 
pieces of #12 I had from old wiring we ripped out, each about 25' long - 
soldered them together and got around 180-210 wraps on my little "core" I 
taped the outside of this and put it in a coffe can.  Now can I expect to 
get any inductance / ballasting out of this?

Any combinations of the above ideas? I have a variac too that I got for 
like $5 but I think its 10A and I don't want to risk hurting it....

Thanks, and nice to be a part of this great 'family' again.... :-)

Jonathon