Secondary coil Winding: was- tesla coil

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

In a message dated 1/4/01 6:48:52 AM Pacific Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

Ed Phillips wrote:
<< 
    I have also wound a couple of these same forms by simply holding onto
 the secondary from and turning it in my hands, with fingers again
 applying tension to the wire.  That takes about two or three times as
 long, but if the start of the winding is made nice and square with the
 form, results in a very nice looking coil.  Same precaution about
 pre-cut masking tape.  I would think this method would work pretty well
 for large forms provided the wire isn't so large that it can't be held
 tight enough to get a smooth and tight coil.
 
    Of course, for the big jobs most of you guys seem to be building,
 something more heroic is reuired!
 
 Ed 
  >>

Hi Ed, all,
I've wound all of my secondary coils to date by hand, including my 12"
dia. sec for my 10 kVA "Medusa". The big 12" form does present a 
challenge for hand winding though. The thing is too big to get a good
hold on! I simply placed the 12" form in two lawn chairs with blankets
(or towels) in them to reduce the drag to where I could turn the tube by
hand with reasonable ease. Yeah, it takes a while this way and you do
have to keep plenty of masking tape handy, as there is no way in this
God's green earth that you will be able to finish it at one time! It took 
me about 4 to 5 hrs. of total time to finish winding about 680 turns of
# 16 AWG double Formvar magnet wire on this beast. I guess I'm a lit-
tle too dumb or too lazy to take the time to build me a jig for this pur-
pose (:-o  I did keep the tension with my fingers, but I have to admit, #
16 guage wire is a little tough on the finger tips :-( It wore a groove into
my fingers. Really, when I consider how little total time that I actually 
spend winding the secondary compared to the total time that I'll spend
running the completed system, it isn't really that much time and I guess 
I figured it wasn't worth the extra time and effort to sit down and design
a winding jig when that time could be spent on winding the coil by hand.
And it isn't like I'm winding a new sec coil every week or something. If 
that were the case, I would TAKE the time to design and build myself a
winding jig! I've always gotten satisfactory results by "freehanding" my 
secondaries, though. Finally, I've spent too much of my money on the 
coils themselves to be able to afford the nice machine shop, complete
with the infinitely adjustable speed lathe (:^O  

My $.02 worth,
David Rieben