death of a pancake

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

Original poster: "marc metlicka by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <mystuffs-at-orwell-dot-net>

All,
I killed my flat coil yesterday. I thought i would be ok if i put very
thin coats of insulating varnish on my coil, allowing each to dry before
the next. Well the first coat brushed out real thin, dried very nice,
the second coat went on ok, dried, the third coat went on.
Then all the varnish got soft and Bloop, most of the turns raised up.
This wasn't bad enough, but my idea of pushing them back down just made
matters worse and the next thing i knew it, everything i tried went down
hill from then on. 
  Now i have a very messed up, crossed wires, hard as a rock, plant
stand?
I'm going to wind another one and this time i will do it in stages, 1\4
of the total at a time with some alkyd varnish on and place under an IR
heat lamp. Once the next one is done i should be able to bake a thick
layer of varnish over the complete coil, This should halt all but the
nastiest coupling induced racing arcs, (i hope)
  right after i pulled the white PVC tape off the windings i thought
about pouring about 1\2" of wax over the windings, lack of patients made
me do the wrong thing, but i think wax would have worked.
  sometimes you win a few, sometimes you loose a few and sometimes i
just mess up!
Take care,
Marc