Pig Beautification and Craftsmanship

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

Original poster: "Christopher Boden by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <chrisboden-at-hotmail-dot-com>

I'm seen a lot of people go to great lengths to not only make their coils 
functional, but beautiful as well. Some coils are even made more for Art 
than Sparks (Electrum being a prime example).

Sure, there are a lot of Duct tape designers out there (I'm one of them) and 
the Quick and dirty approach IS functional, for a LOT of what we do we 
adhere to the old rule of "Form Follows Function". But today we jumped right 
into art with the renovation of our old pig.

The original "Plan" (I love that word) was to sand off the light surface 
rust and shoot a coat of basic gray primer on the beast. Simple.....that was 
the plan.....really.

1st stop: A local body shop (the one we do car-nights at) 12PM
Sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand 
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand 
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand 
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand 
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand 
sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand sand

2PM The canister shines like it was made of stainless, including the top. 
There is still about 1% painted in areas where we couldn't get our fingers 
and such.

Then we drove to another place (A garage, also a sponsor) and removed the 
retaining ring (there were a LOT of creepy-crawlies in the space under the 
ring, watch out....yes, some were live, yes, I'm a wus). We also removed all 
the copper hardware that CAN be removed without taking out the connections 
(the compression fittings, bolts and nuts).

3:30PM after a lesson in static electricity (Bead Blasters BITE!) all the 
copper hardware shines like gold, my arms are sore from thousands of 
electrocutions (about a .5" spark every 2 seconds from the static), my back 
is killing me (the pig weighs MUCH more than I do), but the pig is well on 
it's way to being beautiful. It's art, somebody has to suffer :)

We're planning on painting the pig in one of several ways. Either high gloss 
black (with the copper hardware this should look beautiful), Chrome yellow 
(the Mustang color), or Red and White (Caution colors). Opinions?

We're wondering if it's ok to grind off the 2 big mounting loops (the square 
part that actually hangs it to the pole) as it serves no purpose at all and 
just gets in the way.

The "Plan" is to paint the pig, then fab a cart from square-tube stock about 
twice the size of the pig. The pig would sit on a piece of .5" UHMW (or 
poly) bolted to one end of the cart. The other end would have storage for 
cables and such, or a mounting point for the ballasting module. Thoughts? 
Ideas?

What would the biggest (practial) size secondary we could reasonably feed 
with this? It's a 13.8kV 10kVA pig. I'm thinking a minimum of 12"dia, and 
would like to go bigger, maybe 18 if we can get the pipe (PVC is still 
doable at these diameters, right?)

I would also like to obtain some of the large compression insulators in the 
4-6" X 18-24" size to use for primary-table supports (like the 13M, only a 
LOT smaller :) ) anyone know who manufactures them? I would have to only get 
4 donated for this, maybe 5 (spare....ceramic and all that).


Have fun!


Christopher "I feel pretty" Boden Geek#1
President / C.E.O. / Alpha Geek
The Geek Group
www.thegeekgroup-dot-org
Because the Geek shall inherit the Earth!


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