Unpotting a France 12/30

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Original poster: "Jim Mora" <jmora@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello,

I have a couple of France 12/30?s. I want to 
un-pot one of them (some of the tar is cracked 
and likely leaky) and remove a few shunts to make 
a cap charger with a 5x multiplier. A newer 15/60 
works just fine with some serious humming? fast 
and weighs three times the France! I am wondering 
if I can keep the France in the original tank and 
carefully heat it in a gas powered BBQ. Ideally, 
I would like to pour molten tar out and soak the 
tranny in diesel, or gasoline to dissolve the 
rest. I guess I will have to remove the core to 
knock out some shunts and hopefully be able to reconnect the HV bushings.

If I can leave it in the original tank, I would 
melt some paraffin and Vaseline together and 
repot it in that. Hopefully I can squeeze 40 or 
50 ma out of it and current limit the cap input 
which would likely be just right. I know this is 
a well covered thread; but, has anyone 
successfully done this using a similar method? I 
would be open to mineral oil which probably sinks 
away the heat better, but the on time should be no more than a couple minutes.

Thanks Much,
Jim Mora