[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Linseed Oil

At 12:34 PM 5/29/99 -0400, you wrote:


>A very nice way of saving lives from heavy burns and electrocution you folks 
>have here at this "ring" . My hat is off to you people...For a long time now 
>I have been reading many posts from the other experimenters trying to get the 
>info I need so as to not waste time asking a question that was answered 
>already. Well I have not seen
>any other zany person making a poly cap out of old aircraft blue prints (made 
>of some tuff type of plasic that they call "mylars") and use linseed oil as 
>the air barrier that I could buy on sale  5gal for $30.00. . Now...the reason 
>I ask is my life...I have found that linseed oil is a sure fire way to set 
>your garage on fire if you leave it on a rag... in fact on T.V. they show a 
>lady soak a rag in linseed oil, wrap it in a foil ball,
>put it in a foam cooler and 12 minutes later the thing bursts into 
>flame...spontaneous
>combustion in a bad sort of way...Now at my work they use linseed oil to coat 
>the inside of pipe type structures on aircraft of every kind so it won't 
>corrode. My guess
>is that if there is no porous matter to feed the oxygen to it your not going 
>to flame-on. The oil container/cap is a home made fiberglass box with a 1/2 
>inch glass plate for the bottom. So that is my question,  can I make a cap 
>without making a cap/bomb ? I looked up linseed oil in the dielectric 
>constant table and it says 3.2-3.5
>Thanks for any help...
>Denis Despins   KC6TRW
>

Hi Denis or Bill ??,

	Welcome to the Tesla list.

	I don't think anyone is using linseed oil any more... Except me.  I have a
can of it here on my desk (I really do!)  I was using it for insulation on
a few small things since it is so nostalgic to use this old insulating oil.
 Any hardware store sells it for a good price.  Today, we are all using
mineral oil as sold at the drug store or cow laxatives if you are the
country type.  Some use fancy transformer oils they get from Texaco and
other big name oil suppliers.  They are all flammable to a point but
nothing like linseed oil.  They also have practically no smell unlike the
seed stuff.  Most of us (that like our houses) always have a fire
extinguisher around when using oil filled parts, just in case.  Be careful
of parts that may contain the dreaded PCB oils from the 70s!  If the oil
doesn't get you the EPA will...

	Today, the MMC caps you have seen are really coming on big as the best and
most modern cap to use for Tesla coils.  they have no oil.  The take
advantage of the very high tech manufacturing techniques of today and they
use polypropylene too.  this has been a hot topic in the last few weeks.

	Polypropylene is the dielectric of choice these days.  It has good
properties but most important of all, its dielectric heating is very low.
Most Tesla caps die from overheating and polypropylene runs cooler than all
the other dielectric.

	If you make on oil filled cap be sure to give is a method to explode
safely.  A number of people have made very air tight caps that have blow
oil all over everything when they failed.  A loose fitting top is good.

Cheers,

	Terry