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Re: 1959 Electricity for Boys article




>Original Poster: ginger <stephen_crawshaw-at-tesla94.freeserve.co.uk> 
>
>Hi all
>
>Sorry if this is a repetition, but I've been off the list for a >little 
while..... Anyway, I found a cool website with "Kitchen >Experiments" 
for kids, amongst which was a Tesla Coil (?!). Its from >a 1959 article 
in "Electricity for Boys" (US). Check it out.
>
>http://freeweb.pdq-dot-net/headstrong/ind2.htm
>
>Cheers
>
>Steve
>

Hey,

I built the coil described in the article.  The coil itself looks quite 
"midevil", and is a beauty to behold.  I made the supports for the coil 
out of clear plex, which may or may not look better than the wood that 
the article calls for.  I also tried to build the primairy transformer 
that is included in the plans (a disruptor style inductor), but I lost 
patience with it after winding fourty layers or so of the secondairy 
(which is 150 total layers of 250 turns each of #34 wire), which is a 
shame, because I think the inductor would be almost as neat as the coil.  
I finally just got a NST to do the job of the primairy.  The coil is not 
a great performer in my opinion, but i have not had a chance to tinker 
with it a whole lot so it may just be way out of tune.

For performance, I would recomend a monopolar coil, but I must admit 
that this bipolar sure does look good even just sitting there doing 
nothing.

FWIW,
Matthew Shaffer, Raleigh NC


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