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Re: My Primary Coil disaster



Original poster: "S & J Young by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <youngs-at-konnections-dot-net>

Patrick,

One secret to making nice primaries is to avoid feeding the tubing through
holes in the first place.  I recommend you remove your tubing from your
supports.  Then carefully saw off the tops of your supports, cutting through
the top part of your holes.  The idea is to end up with partial holes with
the top part opening just slightly more narrow than your tubing diameter.
Then one simply snaps the tubing into the partial holes - no muss, no fuss &
no cuss!

Some just lay the tubing on their insulating supports and secure the tubing
in place with lots of tie-wraps.  See the recently posted picture of Bart's
coil primary for example.

Your tubing may now be partially work hardened and will be difficult to
salvage.  You can straighten it again by clamping one end in a very secure
vise and pulling the other end with a come-along or some sort of long lever
to just slightly stretch the tubing.  It will straighten nicely, but it will
be less flexible.  But perhaps you could still get it to snap into your
primary supports OK.

Or, chalk up the first try to lessons learned & buy a new roll of tubing.
--Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2001 11:54 AM
Subject: My Primary Coil disaster


> Original poster: "Patrick Bloofon by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <transactoid-at-home-dot-com>
>
> Okay, this whole tesla coil thing has not been going my way. First, the
wire
> breaks while winding the secondary (perhaps you've seen my post...). Now,
my
> primary coil is all but an expensive hunk of copper.
>
> I cut out and drilled 5 really nice offsets. I mounted them onto a
surface, and
> began feeding 1/4" copper tube through it, starting from the outside.
After
> about 5 loops, the tubing was so bent, twisted, and demented out of shape
I
> couldn't go any further.  Loops were overlapping and the tube was flexed
in
> multiple planes (ie, bent side to side as well as up and down...). I'll
try to
> get some pictures up so you can see this mess.
>
> What I'd like to know is:
>
> -Are there any good ways to re-bend or straigten the copper tubing when it
is
> in such a state? (ie, is this thing salvagable)
>
> -Seeing as my method of winding failed miserably, I'm guessing it's not
how
> others do it. What is the "proper" way to wind it?
>
> PS. This copper tube is extremely expensive where I live. The cheapest I
found
> was $30 for 50 feet.  Home Depot doesn't even carry it around here.
>
> Thanks,
> "A very frustrated coiler",
> Patrick
>
>
>
>