There is no 'best ' wire size, all things are equal.

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

Original poster: "Albert Hassick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <uncadoc-at-juno-dot-com>

Hi Chris, John.   The 5" tall secondary tale that John told really hit
home. You can tweak your Tesla program and come up with the ultimate 5"
tall coil with super fine wire that the P.C. program says will work just
dandy.  Thanks John, for the tongue in cheek!   And you hit the nail
right on the head!  Whoa, now for a little common horse sense.  Computers
can do many things, but they are only as good as the individual whom sits
next to them pounding the keyboard to come up with a great and powerful
coil.  The computer design aids are fun to play with and I lately enjoy
toying with them now that I am finally figuring out how to use this darn
computer of mine for anything more than e-mail.  And mostly to see if the
computer program could tell me why our four undesigned coils work so
well.  But we never ever used any computer design parameters from any
program to design any of our coils.  And they all work great.  We used
what we could get and as cheap as we could get it. All this from an old
Lindsay book for $7.00 by R.A.Ford. The best one yet is our fourth coil
with #14ga. wire (500 foot spool) and complete secondary cost of only
$30.00.  It works beyond our wildest dreams.  We wound it just to see
what would happen, and there are plenty of sparks and corona field
happening from this coil which we have affectionately dubbed "Fat Boy"
cause it is short and fat and it makes gigantic arcs. And all this with
only a two turn primary coil. There is nothing like hands on and
experimentation to really delve deep into the Tesla coiling hobby.  Don't
get me wrong now, the computer is a tool, and a good one too. But all
tools ultimately need to come under the guiding hand of us mere humans as
we contemplate the "dirt factor".  Yep, actually getting some dirt under
our fingernails.  Yikes!     Al.

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000 20:15:54 -0700 "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
writes:
> Original poster: "John H. Couture by way of Terry Fritz 
> <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <couturejh-at-worldnet.att-dot-net>
> 
> 
> Chris -
> 
> Congratulations, You have now found the TC secret that increases 
> spark
> length for any coil. Just use smaller wire? For example the JHCTES 
> Ver 3.1
> computer program shows a default coil that produces 40 inch 
> streamers!  The
> program will also show that if you increase the inductance the 
> streamers
> will increase in length. If you change the 44 TPI (24 AWG) to 200 
> TPI (very
> small dia wire) the computer shows more inductance and a gain in 
> streamer to
> 45 inches. However, the computer also shows that the 1000 turns 
> gives a
> secondary that is only 5 inches tall and obviously would be a faulty 
> coil
> that would not work. The point is that when using computer programs 
> the
> designer has to use reasonable judgement or he will end up with a 
> useless
> coil.
> 
> John Couture
> 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2000 3:19 PM
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: what is the best wire size to use?
> 
> 
> Original poster: "Christopher Telford by way of Terry Fritz
> <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <christophertelford-at-yahoo-dot-com>
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> Previously i was under the impression that the thicker
> the wire the better for a secondary coil, as long as
> you could get around 1000 turns on the coil form.
> Recently, both my friend john and I made secondaries
> on identical formers. He used 28swg wire, and i used
> 24. when no topload was being used, his performs
> better than mine by around 5cm of arcing distance.
> When used with topload my primary does not have enough
> turns to get tunning for his coil, so i can't fairly
> test the relative performance. The only differences
> between the coils are that his is wound about 7 cm
> longer than mine. Both are 110mm wide, and my coil is
> around 55cm long, his being 62cm long.
> would i be better off winding a more numerously turned
> primary and using 28swg wire when using these
> dimmensions of secondary coil, or is the performance
> increase of the 28swg wire coil over the 24swg coil
> explained by the difference of wound length? I was
> under the impression that the long thin design of
> secondary coil was ineffecient, and that squatter
> shaped ones performed better.
> 
> Any thoughts on this would be welcomed,
> 
> Chris Telford
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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