Toroid Smoke

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Toroid Smoke
From: Chuck Curran <ccurran-at-execpc-dot-com>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 22:08:00 -0500
Hello All:

	Now I'm really havin' fun.  Tonight was the third night of testing in a
row (vacation) and things are getting to make more sense each night. 
It's nice to make a change and see a specific result that was expected. 
Tonight I had smoke and a very small flame come from the "loose"
connection between the secondary and the toroid.  The center disc is a
product called Celotex that is 3/4" styrofoam insulation covered on both
sides with aluminum foil.  Well, the connection got hot enough to start
a small flame, some smoke but little damage.  
	The poor old Crab Tree is not doing so well.  After a significant
number of hits from the Coil the leaves in the strike area are pretty
dead.  Time to relocate the coil, it's a nice tree.  I put new analog
Simpson panel meters in this morning so it should be tough to blow
these.  Spark gap is running a touch rough tonight so I will have to
examine it before running again.  It's nice to finally have a better
idea about what many on the list have been working with, long before I
got started.  I had two friends from work over tonight and they really
couldn't believe it!  I'm happy it's now in a reasonable state of tune. 
The oven elements have really helped alot, the variac doesn't seem to
mind things at all any more--no noise and easy to turn it gave some
resistance before with only the welder.

Chuck