lightning arresters

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

Original poster: "Godfrey Loudner by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ggreen-at-gwtc-dot-net>

I have some lightning arresters for from the local junkyard and have no idea
as to their reliability. If one of the arresters is
placed across an x-ray transformer with a short spark gap in series,
bringing up the voltage with a variac causes little
blue sparks across the gap. As the voltage is increased, the intensity of
the blue sparks increases until a flame appears.
In the past, I mistakenly thought the appearance of the flame was a sudden
switching on of the arrester. But actually the current becomes high enough
to support a flame. The appearance of the flame is gradual, not sudden. Is
this how
arresters are suppose to behave? I thought that the arrester would suddenly
switch on. Quite possibly the arresters
are bad. There are a couple of guys on the list who wanted one for their
14,400 volt pole pigs, but the is no use shipping such heavy objects for
only shipping charges if they are bad.

Godfrey Loudner