my first secondary, and other stuff

[Hhchicken1-at-xxxxxxx (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

Hi list 
I'm putting the pieces together for my first coil, and have a couple of q's: 
1. My secondary i got a transformer rewind bloke to do me (£2), it is about 
13.5 inches long, 3.25 inches across and is wound with .315mm wire.  About 
800 turns i think.  Problems: 1. cardboard tube had a sticker on it, and 
wasn't sanded so has some bumps (not too serious i think) 2. Some gaps in the 
winding.  How badly will these affect performance?  I've managed to get a 
good 4 or 5 inch section at one end that has virtually no gaps, so i'll use 
that at the bottom. 
2.  My hv transformer:  I'm going to use a farm of between 2 and 4 car 
ignition coils, driven with a series cap and dimmer switch off 240v mains to 
give around 50,000v.  Any idea how much current they will have each? I'm 
guessing about 1 or 2 ma. I tried to measure it but fried my cheap multimeter 
:(  I need to know so i can figure out what cap (wine bottles probably due to 
low budget) i'm going to use.  I know they won't blow up cos i've already 
tried 2 and they work fine with the mains setup. 
3. What sort of width spark gap should I use for this coil? 
4.  Has anyone built a Chris Telford- style bucket primary?  I tried making a 
flat and conical primary with copper pipe, but made a total mess of it.  The 
primary I'll probably use is a small plastic bucket, wound around with normal 
thick insulated mains cable.  I have some neat wire strippers so tapping 
won't be too much of a problem. 

Thanks for your help guys, 
            Henry Hallam