MOT with chopped off primary -- Anyone tried this before?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Wilson Ng" <metalstorm2002@xxxxxxxxxxx>



Hello. I've read an old posting about connecting the filament winding of a 
MOT to  a light
dimmer/capacitor combination. It worked for me. However I've found that 
increasing the
capacitance dosen't increase the output power of the MOT that much. I 
suspect that the filament
winding has too few turns to be effective.

  Then I painstakingly removed the primary and rewound it with 30 turns of 
#18 stranded wire.
When used with the dimmer/capacitor setup, it worked much better. The MOT's 
output power is
now equivalent to that of my ignition coil when a 10 mf cap is used. With 
this output power,
my very crude and tiny tesla coil was able to produce up to 3" sparks. The 
only problem is
internal arcing, which I've encountered several times when I adjusted the 
spark gap too wide.
One thing I don't understand is why is there no internal arcing when the 
MOT's output is
shorted with a .25" spark, but when it is used to power my tesla coil, a 
gap of this width
causes internal arcing? Is it possible to solve this problem by 
disconnecting the end of the
MOT's secondary winding that connects to its core?

_