This coil was designed to be a experimental platform to test various ideas and be capable of upgrading to larger secondary coils and higher power.  For that reason the primary is very oversized for the size of the transformer and secondary coil.  The plan is to update the various components over time.  Immediately after running this coil for the first time it was clear that the spark gap was overheating very quickly.  It was quickly replaced with a copper tube gap.
 

Power Control:  3KVA Variable Transformer (Variac)
Power Supply: 15000V, 60mA Neon Sign Transformer (NST)
Primary Coil: 8 Turns 1/4" Copper Tubing, 3/8" Spacing
Tank Capacitor:  3x  .004uF 40000V Doorknob Capacitors
Spark Gap:  7 Element Static, 3/4 Inch Diameter
Secondary Coil:  2 1/4", 1000 turns of #26 Magnet Wire
Discharge Terminal: 8" Sphere
 

Status:  First Light - January 2nd, 2006
Converted to V1.1
 

First Light - January 2nd
It's hard to beleive that I was excited about these little sparks!