another interesting (maybe) bit of cap info

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: another interesting (maybe) bit of cap info
From: Trsla List <tesla-at-stic-dot-net>
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 07:26:12 -0500
Approved: tesla-at-stic-dot-net
Subject: another interesting (maybe) bit of cap info
  Date:  Tue, 3 Jun 97 05:30:23 UT
  From:  "William Noble" <William_B_Noble-at-msn-dot-com>
    To:  "Tesla List" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>


I was at a swap meet saturday and I found some 10KV .02 microfarad paper 
capacitors - they are about 2 inches in diameter and 8 inches long.  My 
nascent coil is a standard 15KV 30 ma xformer with a 14 turn flat
primary and 
a 4" X about 15 inch secondary.  I had been using .002 microfarads from
two 
other capacitors, so I tried putting two of these paper capacitors in
series 
to give me .01 at 20KV.  This seems to work ok as far as the capacitors
are 
concerned - I got a lot more energy out of the coil - were before I
could get 
a break out from a toilet bowl float top load, but nothing larger, I now
could 

break out of my half broken torroid or even a cylindrical 5 gal gas can
(long 
empty), and the sound of the sparks from the secondary got much louder -
in 
fact they are now much louder than the spark gap.  I ran the coil for a
few 
minutes and the capacitors warmed up just a bit, so they will probably
not be 
happy with long runs.

It seems to me that now what I need to do is to make a much better top
load.  
Since I can get styrofoam wreath cores easily here, that would seem like
a 
good way to go, and then wrap the core with aluminum foil.  What outside 
diameter would you-all recommend for this little exercise??

current spark length is in the 10 to 12 inch range, and there are many
such 
sparks at the same time.  When I put the gas tank on for a load I got
many 
sparks but they were much smaller, but the length of arc I could draw
was the 
same.  I did notice an interesting effect when playing with the gas tank
top 
load - this tank has been sitting for several years unused, so it had a
goodly 

layer of spider webs and dust on the top of it.  When I put it on the
coil and 

fired it up, the dust/spider web mess would lift up, and when I drew an
arc to 

any part of the tank, it would lower (proportionally)  There is clearly
some 
pretty good electrostatic effect taking place at the same time here -
perhaps 
that electrostatic repulsion can be used for something useful???

by the way, should you be interested, the lables on the boxes the
capacitors 
came in says 5910-00-668-8058
FSCM 99120, P/N LPI00-203A
Capacitor, Fixed, paper
1 each
DLA900-79-M-N573
A-8/79
Plastic Capacitors Inc

so, it looks to me like a 20 year old capacitor for some unknown purpose

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