Re: An Idea! for cap

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

Original poster: Gary VanderPutten <garyvp-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

on 12/6/03 7:44 PM, Tesla list at tesla-at-pupman-dot-com wrote:

 > Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>
 >
 > Tesla list wrote:
 >>
 >> Original poster: ashumate3-at-aol-dot-com
 >>
 >> I remember many years ago there was a set of books from Popular Science and
 >> one of the projects was a Tesla Coil. The capacitor that had been designed
 >> for that was a piece of glass with medal foil sheets on each side. You can
 >> bulid yourself a custom cap.
 >>
 >> I don't know where you could find these books, but it seem like there where
 >> about 12 volumes to the set.
 >>
 >> Al Shumate
 >
 > Over the years I built many glass plate capacitors for TC use, starting
 > about 1940 and ending about 1960.  Never had much life with them and
 > consider them a waste of time in the era of MMC's.
 >
 > For those interested in nostalgia I have an 0.004 ufd 15 kV mica
 > transmitting capacitor by Dubilier; cast aluminum case.  Label has
 > Bureau of Steam Engineering on it and probable date is about 1918, as
 > the Navy quit building spark transmitters by then.  Works quite well for
 > a small TC.  Also have some earlier caps which were intended for spark
 > transmitters but don't have them to look at.  Made in blocks of 0.001
 > ufd and guys could buy as many as they could afford.  Have never put
 > voltage to one as they look in pretty poor shape.
 >
 > Ed
 >
 >
Glad to see there is someone else who coiled way back when....

I built all my coils in the 1960's with glass plate caps; while they broke
down frequently, they were affordable and easy to repair, and who knew any
better? Mind you, there were few books on the subject, no spreadsheets, no
Tesla list. I took up the hobby again in 2001, found the list and all those
web sites on my first google,  and with the help of all that information,
built several small and medium coils which worked really well from the
git-go. Interestingly, the only major difference in construction between
then and now was the use of commercial capacitors which not only work well,
but predictably. Yeah, I tried to do it cheaply with 'ebay specials' but I
finally bit the bullet - while experimenting with caps in an interesting
exercise, nothing outperforms a Maxwell or a geek MMC.

Gary