Metal between primary windings-Ok or not?

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

Original poster: "Chris Roberts by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <quezacotl_14000000000000-at-yahoo-dot-com>


Hi Everybody,

Well, I finally ordered the one capacitor that I needed (The one I blew up) 
so when it gets here, I'll be back in buisness. However, before I start 
firing it up again, I have a nagging question that has been bugging me ever 
since our coil was made. We wound our primary coil in a bit of an oddball 
way. We had a bunch of 1/4" coaxial cable straps laying around. These 
things are little plastic arches with a  1/2" nail in one side. You stick 
the cable underneath the arch and pound the nail into whatever you want to 
hold the cable to. We found that the distance between two of these was the 
perfect spacing for our windings, so we wound the primary around these 
things and nailed them in. It dosen't arc between them, but there are about 
110 of these nails in the spacings between the windings of the primary. So 
could these be the culprit of why my coil still puts out sub-par sparks? I 
keep thinking they might be acting like shunts in an NST but I! 'm not 
sure. Thanks again.


-Chris

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all 
of them yourself."-unknown