From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!don
Newsgroups: net.physics
Title: Tesla Coil
Article-I.D.: allegra.1282
Posted: Thu Apr 28 17:06:25 1983
Received: Fri Apr 29 20:20:34 1983

Subject: Tesla Coils

I built several in High School.  The biggest uses a 10 KV line
transformer, but you can build small ones with Neon Sign transformers.
(don't use Oil furnace transformers.  I have burnt up many of them
trying.)

--------S ||| S---------> <-----S  S
	S ||| S	   |	 S	S  S
	S ||| S	  ---		S  S
    T	S ||| S   ---	C    L1	S  S  L2
	S ||| S	   |		S  S
--------S ||| S-----------------S--S----(ground)

T - 10 to 30 KV transformer
C - Capacitor (I used tang jars wrapped in foil filled with salt water)
S - Spark gap (half inch)
L1 - a few turns of heavy wire coiled around base of L2 (but not touching).
L2 - hundreds of turns of fine (28 gauge or more) wire on a plastic tube.
	(Say 2 inches in diameter and three feet long).

You must tune the coil, so make sure C and/or L1 is adjustable.  Adding
or taking away tang jars was good enough when I did it.  Try not to
kill yourself!

You can get much more sophisticated.  My large coil had to have an
air jet running on the spark gap to "quench" it, and the transformer
drew about 200 amps.  It was spectacular tho!