Re: Salt water caps

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Salt water caps
From: Stanley Harle <lazer-at-earth.wazoo-dot-com>
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 16:39:18 -0700 (MST)



On Sun, 1 Dec 1996, Tesla List wrote:

> Like many coilers, I don't have big bucks to blow (no pun intended 
> Malcolm) on commercial capacitors.
> I am experiencing VERY poor performance using bottle/salt water caps and 
> need some assistance with calculating the capacitace.
> 
> Can anyone help me with design information of salt water caps???
> ie. dimension of bottles, amount of salt to mix with water...

	Last year, when I first started this crazy hobby, I experimented
with salt water caps.  I tried 3 liter coke bottles.  They don't work real
well with 15kV, but they might at a lower voltage.  I had used a formula
that I found in the tesla list archives to calculate the capacitance, then
tried with smaller bottles.  I think that they were tea bottles.  These
worked fairly well, but I had to make a bunch of them.  I them tried
polyurethane buckets.  These really sucked, but I was able to get my first
sparks with them.  Then I got in on the first group buy from Condenser
Products. I can probably answer questions about them, though, since I see
that no one else responded.

Stan Harle
Alamogordo, NM, USA