Re: A newbie question

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

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

Greg,

I'd go with the 3" or so secondary diameter.  Usually some
scrap 3" PVC plastic pipe can be obtained for free from building sites,
or elsewhere.  You may want to consider using a flat primary.  That's
the trend nowadays.  Beer bottle capacitors work fine so that's the
cheapest way probably.  MMC type capacitor arrays are all the rage
these days, but they do cost more than beer bottles.

A friend of mine build a nice small TC which was...... about 3" x 16" for
the secondary size, wound with 26awg magnet wire I think.
He used a flat primary I think it had 15 turns or so.  His spark gap
was a 6 segment type.  The power supply was a 15/60  NST.  He
used two dish-pans filled with beer bottles for the capacitor array.
The coil gave a nice 21" spark output or so.

Welcome to the world of coiling.. !

John