Wire worries......do I need HV wire, or will 600V hardware store wire do?

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

Original poster: Phlunktfysics101-at-aol-dot-com 

Hello all!

I'm a new coiler, and I'm at the point where I have just about everything 
here to assemble my coil, except perhaps suitable wire.  I bought some 8 
AWG copper multistranded wire from the hardware store.  It is thick, and 
seems heavy duty, but it is only rated at 600V.  Just about all the wire at 
the hardware store is 600V max.  I would be using this to make my 
connections from my 15,000V 30mA NST and 45kV Maxwell Caps.  My question is 
will the insulation burn off or something?  Do I need to shell out the big 
bucks for HV wire?  Or are most people using the same low voltage wire?  I 
looked on all the popular sites, but wire voltage rating is rarely 
mentioned.  And when it is, it's always HV wire like 30kV or something and 
I cant tell if it's just for bragging purposes.

Also, I built a "vacuum sucker gap" modeled after the one on Gary Lau's 
website.  It seemed to be a good easy to make alternative until I can rig 
up an RSG.  Has anyone else used one of these, and do they work well?

I appreciate any advice.
Jack