I have been building tesla coils off and on for 30 years now. Most of them worked, but not well. Their design was poor (too tall, thin, fine wire etc.) Recently, a friend gave me a design program called Teslac. I then got on the internet and discovered that there were OTHER coilers like me. Hundreds! After several months of research, (swiping other peoples ideas) and the help of Telsac, I put together a nice reliable medium sized coil. It took 2 months to complete the coil. Used NST's were acquired. I also purchased commercial capacitors. The rest of the components I safely cobbled together. In previous coiling attempts, I had a very high failure rate of transformers. All of them died. I needed to pay special attention to the protection circuit required for the power supply. There are a lot of elaborate protection circuits out there. Very confusing. I decided to consult a fellow coiler, so I got in touch with Brian Basura. Brian sent me a schematic for a simple design consisting of some resistors and bypass capacitors. It works WELL. Brian, you're a genius! No failures after dozens of 1 or 2 minute runs. I also had a 5 minute outdoor run at the stroke of midnight New Year's Eve. The coil produces 4 foot arcs to random objects in my garage. The outdoor run was interesting but hampered by a 10 mph breeze. Those arcs are not as robust as they look, being greatly affected by wind. It was fun running the coil outdoors. The coil was able to really stretch out it's arcs. Tesla coils are fun toys but you must fear their power. Voltage/current levels will cause death. For now, I am experimenting with different toploads and capacitor configurations. Here are some of my coil specs.

PRIMARY: Flat spiral copper tubing.
SECONDARY: 6" diam. x 26" length wound with 22 guage wire.
POWER: 3 15/60 NSTs banked in parallel.
CAPACITORS: Plastic Capacitors Inc. and surplus from FAIR RADIO SALES in a series/parallel config.
Total capacitance .022mfd.
MISC: Multiple gap static spark gap. Safety gap on transformers. 4"and 6" aluminum duct toroids.

The coil design programs available make coil construction simple. They do a lot of the math involved. Trial and error method is part of the coiling experience also. Another interesting item is the response from onlookers. Some are fascinated while others show no interest at all, with comments like, "So, what's it do?' and "Turn it off! It hurts my ears!" The sound level is quite high but that's part of the experience. Actually, you can hear when the coil is in tune, making sound an important part of the dial in process.

If you're looking for magnet wire, give this guy a call. JOE CASSATA (630) 420-0342. He runs the COAX CONNECTION. Good guy, good prices!

IOWA WINTER - Outdoor Run 1-22-2000 Faint 2 foot streamer coil ran flawless earlier indoors, when moved outdoors it had trouble beaking out. I blame it on the slight breeze.

Same Outdoor Run. A little better out put. Ran 1 minute before shutting down. About 3 seconds after shut down my glass cap exploded. Well, actually it was a whimpy "pop", stringy thick oil everywhere. Not sure what happened.

Found a use for my pile of obits. 100 MA Jacobs Ladder.

View of The Primary and Strike Rail, The rail gets hammered often.

View of components 3-15/60 NST's in parallel, also protection circuit.