Undesired "effect" with saltwater caps

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Original poster: "Chris by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chris-at-atomic-pc-dot-com>

Hi all,

I realize that many experienced coil builders frown upon salt water
caps, but right now I'm trying to make the most of available materials.
So I have a cardboard box set up with 8 Snapple bottles in parallel.
Experimenting with different numbers of bottles does not significantly
affect the problem I'm about to mention.

What's happening is, now that I've switched to a series of copper tube
sections as my spark gap (8 tube segments in series, ca. 1 mm apart),
I'm getting big, loud (!) sparks inside the Snapple box which appear to
be going from one bottle cap to the neighboring outside plate of the
next bottle (this is several inches' distance).  Close examination of
the bottles (after disconnecting, of course :-0 ) reveals myriad
pinhole-sized burns through the aluminum foil on the outsides of the
bottles, although the glass is intact and they do not appear to leak.
The secondary will throw about 6 inches of spark if I experiment with #
of primary turns.

I'm using a 10 KV, 23 mA furnace transformer.  I've tried 3 different
primary coil setups, including one of insulated Romex 12 ga. stranded
wire, coupled very closely to the secondary. Maybe the coupling here is
too close?  But the problem happens also with the copper refrigeration
tubing that's spaced much farther from the secondary.

What could be happening here?  Another note, some of the wires I'm using
in the primary circuit are way too thin (16 ga. wire, with alligator
clips to connect things).  Could this be introducing too much reactance
into the primary circuit?  (please forgive my ignorance of these
things).

Thanks,
Chris