Old school welding sets

[Highpower]

(02-01-2016, 04:51 PM)Vinny Wrote: Well the snow has finally gone away enough to get to the shed and it's bright enough to see inside, so I went in and took a pic of the old school welder I have here.  Needless to say, I don't plan on plugging it in any time soon, but I have used it before.  "before" being more than 35 years ago.  Back then the plate was visible, as you can see, not so much now.

Vinny, if you aren't going to use it as a welder I have the perfect project for you.  

I used to know a guy that I called Dr. Frankenstein, because he was always creating lightning in the garage and all around his house. He was REAL big into building Tesla coils, and had one 6 - 7 feet tall. I have video (VHS unfortunately) of him doing all kinds of crazy things with that machine.  

He used an old Lincoln tombstone welder as the power source. That fed a power pole transformer wired in backwards and used as a step up transformer. I remember he sometimes used huge insulators (about 8" dia. and 12 inches high) on the output wiring. The type you would find a power line hanging from on a mega KW tower.

So if you ever get bored - I can put you in touch.....