RE: More destroyed NST's - I don't think so...

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

Original poster: "Ross Overstreet by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <ross-o-at-mindspring-dot-com>

You haven't destroyed anything - you've just made your job a bit more
interesting!  Unless you damage more than 10 or 15 layers of wire in the NST
secondaries, all you have to do is clean the secondary and unwind the wire
until you find the undamaged portion.  Then you solder on a more
mechanically stable (bigger) wire and cover with some tape.  No problemo.  I
tell newbies all the time that you just can't hurt these things.

My technique:
I shattered the insulators with a big hammer.  I froze the unit, attacked
the case with a chisel, beat most of the hardened tar into submission with a
hammer, attacked it with a screwdriver, and then put it in gasoline for a
week!  Every few days I replaced the muddy gasoline with fresh gasoline and
worked on the coils with screwdrivers, dental picks, exacto blades, etc.  I
completely disassembled the unit and removed the primary and both
secondaries from the 2 piece frame.  I accidentally broke both wires off the
secondaries and had to find the end by unwrapping the paper covering and
searching for the end.  Once again - No problemo.

This is the same NST that I am running at 180-200 ma WITHOUT being submerged
in oil.  Now I'm a fool for not using oil or vasoline, and I can only run
for ~90 seconds until the NST is 200+F, and IT WILL DIE one day (*) - BUT it
achieved my goal of having the lightest and smallest NST coil to produce 5
ft arcs at SoCal Teslathon 2000.

(*) a certain person whose name I won't mention will be thrilled when it
finally dies so he can get in a "I told you so".  You should have seen the
smile on Brian's, I mean that guy's face when a big ball of fire and shot
out of the side of one of my secondary windings at SCT2K.  The smile turned
to astonishment when the coil hiccupped and then continued to run
flawlessly, hehe.

Sounds like you have 5 good NSTs sitting around that are half-way done.  I'm
a big fan of NSTs.

Good Luck,
Ross
http://users.better-dot-org/roverstreet/


-----Original Message-----

Original poster: "Garry Freemyer by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Garry-at-NDFC-dot-com>

Well, today I destroyed my fifth NST out of six tries and I am at whits end
on how to prevent this nasty problem from recurring over and over and I want
to ask people out there a few questions.

...  snip....