Re: my first secondary, and other stuff

["Albert Hassick" <uncadoc-at-xxxxxxxx> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

Hi Henry, The sticker should not matter, and the bumps and small gaps in
the coil should not affect anything.  Winding a good looking coil is part
of the learning curve.  Your first coil should work just fine.   The
first spark gap should be adjustable; say for starters, with a single gap
setup you could arrange the gap so it could be adjusted from about 1"
maximum wide open to almost closed.  You can do this real quick with two
pieces of threaded rod and nuts on a pair of crude wood standoffs with
holes bored in them to accept the rods, plain steel rods will work ok for
a beginner and they are inexpensive, its quick and dirty but it will give
you an idea or what to expect with a spark gap with a first coil.  Al.

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000 17:43:12 -0700 "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
writes:
> Original poster: Hhchicken1-at-aol-dot-com 
> 
> 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 
> 
> 
>