Safety Safety
Mandatory Safety Notice Thing for Tesla Coilers and Other Interested Parties
Life is fraught with danger and uncertainty. Tesla-coiling is an enjoyable, exciting, rewarding activity, but on an absolute scale it's probably not what you'd call entirely safe, involving as it may such hazards as mains power, exposed wiring, high voltage electricity, high energy capacitative discharge, power tools with flashing whirling blades, soldering irons for trying not to brand yourself with, the potential for smoke, flames and general conflagration if everything should go badly wrong at some point, and a whole range of incidental stabby-pokey things just waiting for a chance to stab and/or poke the unwary experimenter.
This doesn't mean we should just give up now and go back to slobbing on the couch watching Australian Idol.
But it does mean we'll need an appreciation of the risks involved in what we're doing, and an understanding of how we can work to avoid having anything bad happen. A good place to start is probably the tesla coiling safety sheet on the Pupman homepage, but that is just a start. Your safety is your own concern and responsibility, and your coiling activities are as safe as you make them. So be informed. Respect and look after your tools. Wear eye protection. Read the instructions carefully. Clamp firmly. Cut away from yourself. Ensure adequate ventilation. Don't pick it up by the hot end. Keep fingers clear. Don't attempt to identify unknown substances by taste. And unplug before adjusting.
The information on this website is presented in good faith, and isn't intended either to encourage people who can't or won't take responsibility for their own actions to have a go at building a tesla coil, or as an anything-like-exhaustive guide to doing so. It's just a website I made with some stuff on, and as such it's definitely incomplete and almost certainly at least partly inaccurate too. Demands for compensation for the pot plants/pets/grandparents you toasted in the course of trying out something you saw here will not be sympathetically received.