Measuring Current Output of MOT's?

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

Original poster: "Chris Fanjoy" <zappyman-at-hotmail-dot-com> 

   Any ideas on how to do this? I'm sorting through my MOT's and trying to 
find one that's best suited to building my TC. It didn't take long, to 
figure out an easy way to measure output AC voltage (power with a variac -at- 
10VAC, measure output with a cheap VOM, and multiply the result by 12) but 
I wasn't so lucky in measuring current output. I tried putting two 190 ohm, 
40 watt resistors in series across the output, and measuring the voltage 
drop across one of them. My theory was something like this: for example, if 
the transformer could produce 500mA through these resistors (with the 
Variac set to at least 11 VAC for a 2100V transformer), I should get a 
voltage drop of of 95 VAC across either resistor. With the Variac at this 
voltage, the voltage drop across one resistor was nowhere near 95 V. As the 
Variac was increased, the voltage across the resistor would go way above 
95V, but the resistors quickly started smoking a! nd the experiment had to 
be stopped. My initial conclusion is that I'm either going about this all 
wrong, or that most MOT's are capable of currents much higher than 300mA, 
at least for short periods of time.
   Any thoughts or suggestions?