Re: death of a pancake

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

Original poster: "rheidlebaugh by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <rheidlebaugh-at-zialink-dot-com>

Marc: You have my respect and sympathy, having made a bobo or two in the
past my self. May I suggest a slightly different approach. The laquer you
are using is a solvent base material which softens when ever heated or
solvent is added, ie each new coat. You were sucessful with one coat. That
is good. Now change to a non solvent base like fiberglass resin or epoxi.
Each coat will cost another paint brush so buy several. Epoxi is expensive
so I recoment fiber glass resin. mix it in paper cups not plastic and do not
add more hardner than recomended or you will not have enough time to work
each coat and will waste resin. Walmart sell it at 12$/can. After you have
about 3 layers you can pull the coil free and coat the bottem. Let it harden
over night before you turn it over. Each coat will take about one hour to
get fairly hard, but it will not be full hard till the next day. After that
you can sand it or finish it any way you want. I just coat it and leave it.
 If you want stand off legs you can cast them in wax or polyethylene.
re-enforce them  with cotton and bond them in place with your last coat on
the base. I use hard wood powder from a cabnet shop sander to re-enforce
resin. That is tough as steel and can be turned on a lathe like steel, but
not every one is near a cabnet shop. NO not saw dust it is not fine enough.
  Robert  H

> From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:26:41 -0700
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: death of a pancake
> Resent-From: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Resent-Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:30:37 -0700
> 
> 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
> 
> 
>