Re: Saltwater Caps

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

Original poster: "Jonathan Peakall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jpeakall-at-mcn-dot-org>

Cory,

The aren't wimpy, I have pulled 3' arcs out of SW caps, and that was the
limit of my coil and power. You can't kill 'em and they are cheap. Try using
salt to saturation and using more jars, get hpde containers if you can.

Jonathan Peakall

> Hello all,
>
> After seeing lots of tesla coils with saltwater caps I
> decided to build one... My results are- THEY ARE
> WIMPY!  bad... apparently saltwater, in the realm of
> HV experimenting is only useful as a resistor... :-(!
>
> i dont know if any of you all have any comments on the
> way i went about it but my experiment is as follows:
>
> took a large mason jar, filled it with water, added
> about an Oz of rock salt (im sure my electrode will
> corrode after a while with this stuff :-/   )  then i
> heated it and mixed the salt in, tastes less salty
> than seawater... even though rock salt isnt good for
> you... then covered the surface in medium thickness
> foil then a large screw through the top of the jar,
> almost completely submerged, leads ran off the
> aluminum and the screw that are connected in parallel
> with my small 7000V .9mA DC (yes its wimpy too but
> charges caps) source , then shorted the caps while
> running, got a small slightly more intensified then
> the HV source spark about half inch long... i could
> hear crackling on teh homade cap does this mean its
> puncturing???
>
> big sparks and hot arcs,
>
> Cory Roussel
>
>
>