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Old 11th Jan 2019, 8:43 pm   #21
Ed_Dinning
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Default Re: Old books/magazines and the gems within

Hi Gents, soft iron wire ~ florists binding wire, En Cu wire, Scientific wire co.

Note that these will not make a Wimshurst machine, that uses rotating glass discs.
It will make a nice induction or shocking coil that can power neon tubes and X-ray tubes(not a good idea)

Ed
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Old 11th Jan 2019, 11:21 pm   #22
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Google found me a PDF available for free download from the University of California web site at the time. Google no longer finds it, but if you visit their web site, it is still there.
Which Campus? There's 10 of them and I haven't been able to dig it up unfortunately.
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Old 12th Jan 2019, 12:45 am   #23
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https://archive.org/details/radiumot...vyrich/page/n5
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Old 12th Jan 2019, 10:07 am   #24
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Hi Gents, soft iron wire ~ florists binding wire, En Cu wire, Scientific wire co.

Note that these will not make a Wimshurst machine, that uses rotating glass discs.
It will make a nice induction or shocking coil that can power neon tubes and X-ray tubes(not a good idea)
Agreed. Prior to making my Wimshurst machine I was browsing in a plastics supplier shop in Liverpool. In the clearance sectionI came across a stack of clear perspex discs 12" diameter ca 5 mm thick with a centre hole ready drilled.

I bought a couple ( quite cheaply ) and used them in my subsequent construction project. They were completely satisfactory.
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Old 12th Jan 2019, 11:25 am   #25
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Thankyou, now to sit in a quiet corner and see what mischief I can get up to
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 6:20 pm   #26
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Those Victorian Boys books were classics for this sort of thing - instructions on have to make a bichromate battery, leyden jars which are even great fun for adults nowadays. Mind you the downside was things like sports where it was suggested in one of my favourite volumes that advanced javelin throwing could be practised by throwing at one another 'but you are advised to call out to your fellow before doing so to avoid accidents'. Shooting of course (bow and arrow and shotgun) advised you 'never to shoot at a closed door lest some person emerge from it unexpectedly'.
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 6:24 pm   #27
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I am sure that would work. A lot of the fun and sense of achievement I got in my teens was actually winding the coils, making a core out of lengths of iron wire, making a brass spring / steel interrrupter arm etc. The finished winding was put in a vat of molten candle wax to increase the interlayer insulation. I doubt if soft iron wire, 36 s.w.g. enamelled copper wire is readily available nowadays. Oh and also made a polished oak base .
it did but for some strange reason the diodes in the battery charger literally melted - I mounted the coil on a nice pine base if that is any good.
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 10:57 pm   #28
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Here's another item from the 1904 Model Engineer & Electrician: an observation on the skill of the Chinese and what was then considered to be the remote prospect of them becoming the workshop of the world ( left-hand column, middle section).
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Old 27th Jan 2019, 10:38 am   #29
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it did but for some strange reason the diodes in the battery charger literally melted - I mounted the coil on a nice pine base if that is any good.
I am not sure to what the "it did" refers, but for the induction coils I made, I think the primary was wound in 20 or 22 SWG enamelled copper wire. This is about 1 mm in diameter and the resistance of the primary would be very low indeed. Probably the current would exceed the limit for your charger diodes.
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Old 27th Jan 2019, 12:18 pm   #30
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Going back to the 1890s, there was a series in Boys Own Paper about making (literally here) and using your own internal telephone system. The only ready made part they suggested was the microphone, though the description of how they worked suggested a homebrew version (admittedly using parts possibly not available then) using a carbon rod from a U2 and a couple of dynamo brushes. It worked quite well! It was also, oddly enough, the only part that I actually made
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Old 27th Jan 2019, 12:44 pm   #31
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Those among us that are on the Radioboard Forums* will have seen this (link to a photo, not the forum):-

https://ibb.co/kgFsbgW

Hand crafted telephones with everything made - including speakers and microphones - from scratch.

The gentleman involved teaches school children in an after hours activity group this sort of thing.

*The Radioboard Forums is mainly concerned with Crystal sets, regen radios and other associated home made items.
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Old 29th Jan 2019, 1:46 am   #32
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Going back to the 1890s, there was a series in Boys Own Paper about making (literally here) and using your own internal telephone system. The only ready made part they suggested was the microphone, though the description of how they worked suggested a homebrew version (admittedly using parts possibly not available then) using a carbon rod from a U2 and a couple of dynamo brushes. It worked quite well! It was also, oddly enough, the only part that I actually made
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66. I got the bound copies of BoP to browse when they were passed on to my Dad when his boss's dead father's house was being cleared. Probably around 1962 or 1963. We got our first telly (a BBC only Bush set) and a wind-up gramophone from the same source.
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Old 2nd Feb 2019, 5:37 pm   #33
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I am sure that would work. A lot of the fun and sense of achievement I got in my teens was actually winding the coils, making a core out of lengths of iron wire, making a brass spring / steel interrrupter arm etc. The finished winding was put in a vat of molten candle wax to increase the interlayer insulation. I doubt if soft iron wire, 36 s.w.g. enamelled copper wire is readily available nowadays. Oh and also made a polished oak base .
it did but for some strange reason the diodes in the battery charger literally melted - I mounted the coil on a nice pine base if that is any good.
I am not sure to what the "it did" refers, but for the induction coils I made, I think the primary was wound in 20 or 22 SWG enamelled copper wire. This is about 1 mm in diameter and the resistance of the primary would be very low indeed. Probably the current would exceed the limit for your charger diodes.
Ooops - no this was the car coil set up and the primary on that had a high enough resistance
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Old 2nd Feb 2019, 7:45 pm   #34
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I do like the "Procure a quantity of"... lines in many '30's books.
 
Old 3rd Feb 2019, 1:33 am   #35
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I do like the "Procure a quantity of"... lines in many '30's books.
Yes, has a sense of naughtiness about it.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 1:14 pm   #36
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I used to use an electrophorus (now there’s a really ancient bit of apparatus) to charge things,easily cobbled together with a few sticks of sealing wax melted to form a layer in a tobacco tin, could get a 2cm spark out of it. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to replicate this to show my grand kids,the electrophorus has been gone from physics lessons for at least 50 years.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 3:38 pm   #37
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We didn't do the electrophorus when we covered electrostatics in my physics lessons at school circa 1960, but here is a description from a 1920's school physics text book. Never tried making one myself.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 5:54 pm   #38
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Oh the electrophorus, a fun thing indeed (the Obtain a... bit too) a polyethylene chopping board works well, just tried it with a metal lidded glass jar, a 1/4 inch spark!
 
Old 4th Feb 2019, 5:12 pm   #39
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I experimented with an electrophorus ( Southport Tech GCE A level studies 1955 - 1957 ).

I think the lecturer said that "influence machines" e.g. Wimshurst, effectively made continuous operations of the electrophorus cycle
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Old 4th Feb 2019, 6:38 pm   #40
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As I understand it, an electrophorus is essentially a variable capacitor (!). You start by charging the capacitor (rubbing the insulator to charge it electrostatically then putting the metal plate above/on it and earthing it to charge that 'by induction'). Now you separate the plates. The capacitance goes down, the charge is constant (the charge can't go anywhere) so the voltage goes up. The energy stored also goes up, but you are not getting something for nothing as you have to do work against the electric field to separate the plates.

And yes, the Wimshurst machine uses a similar principle, the foil pieces on the disks are the capacitor plates.

Getting back to the subject, there was a series of books called 'Fun with ....'.

'Fun with Electricity' certainly described the electrophorus, along with a number of battery/bulb/motor experiments.

There was also 'Fun with Electronics' (or was it 'Fun with Radio'??) which contained some simple valve radio projects and 'Fun with HiFi' which included some valve amplifiers to build (I think the Mullard 3-3 is in there).
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