First light....in places it shouldn't have been

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Original poster: CTCDW-at-aol-dot-com 

OK folks... Here's one I need some help on.
This is the first official Pole transformer fired coil I've done. Based on 
a few things that happened, it is over coupled, there isn't enough 
clearance between the primary and secondary (which will get better as the 
secondary goes up) and the toroid is too small. One thing really surprised, 
and infuriated me at the same time... I Blew out my Voltmeter, in a nice 
flash... not sure why that would happen. Also I can't seem to get rid of 
the "bucking" that seems to happen. It is quite audible in the firing of 
the gap and can be heard as a sort of wave coming and going. The gap is 
asynchronous, and is the first async gap I've done.
Not all bad though. At less than half the variac dial I have really 
impressive arcs until I get straight downward hits to the primary from the 
bottom of the secondary. I have to redesign some stuff to raise the sec, 
but I'll let you know what happens. Any help with the voltmeter and bucking 
problems would be helpful. I'm going to replace the 6x24 toroid with an 8 
or 12  by  36  to see where that takes me.

Thanks as always!

Chris Walton