Re: An Idea! for cap

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

Original poster: Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com 

In a message dated 12/6/03 11:50:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:


>I remember many years ago there was a set of books from Popular Science and
>one of the projects was a Tesla Coil. The capacitor that had been designed
>for that was a piece of glass with medal foil sheets on each side. You can
>bulid yourself a custom cap.
>
>I don't know where you could find these books, but it seem like there where
>about 12 volumes to the set.
>
>Al Shumate


Al,

Many years ago, I built my first Tesla coil in high school for the science 
fair.  I used a 12 kv, 60 ma transformer.  The capacitor was a sheet of 
window glass about 24" square with copper sheeting bonded to each side.  It 
looked pretty cool.  Lots of corona loss however.  I had to replace it 
twice.  Once when I broke it and once when the high voltage punched through 
the glass.  Almost any other type of cap, including bottle caps would be 
better than this.

Ed Sonderman