From: "Terrell W. Fritz"
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 09:07:42 -0600
Subject: Re: [TSSP] Toroid field stress
Hi Paul,
It's a "mirror ball". A stainless steel sphere made for garden ornaments.
Very inexpensive. They must stamp the two halves, weld them, and polish
them. Perfect for electrostatic fun!!
http://www.waterscapesweb.com/orbs.html
A small fraction of the usual price for such things! Probably available at the
local garden store too. They are becoming popular and everyone wants them for
gardens.... They come in many sizes. The smaller ones are super cheap!
Tesla list post on this:
=======================================
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 18:50:31 -0600
From: "Tesla list"
To: tesla@pupman.com
Subject: Re: a good topload...Electrodes
Message-Id: <4.1.20010430173701.00a6c470@pop.dnvr.uswest.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Original poster: "Terry Fritz"
Hi All,
Well it finally came! I ordered the 20 inch mirror ball from Waterscapes
on March 26th and it finally got here. Waterscapes warned me, quite
fairly, that it would take awhile ;-)
http://hot-streamer.com/temp/Orb.jpg
It cost $145 total with shipping and everything. They are made by "Michael
Gordan LTD." which appears to be a fairly big outfit although they don't
seem that have achieved a web site yet ;-) The box is custom printed and
all so not just someone in their garage. Waterscapes had it drop shipped
from there. I would imagine many if not all garden ornament shops can
order them.
Michael Gordan LTD.
1030 N. Lake
Spokane, WA 99212
The beast is perfect!! Extremely round polished stainless steel as
advertised. Two halves were either stamped or spun and then welded
together with great precision. It then must have been put in a sphere
polishing machine to give it the spherical mirror finish. The welding was
probably done by machine or the welder was really really good! You can see
the seam, but it is very lightly visible if you look. It has a 1/4 inch
hole in it probably to let the air out and all as it was welded.
Electrostatically perfect!
The metal is around 0.015 inch thick. I would guess it weighs about 5
pounds. The finish is very good with a few tiny flaws that would easily
polish out if one cared.
The packing was rather weak IMHO (many know how "I" like to pack things
:-))) A double corrugated box with a big bubble wrap bag and internal
plastic bag. Probably would not withstand a Gorilla shipper but it arrived
here in perfect shape.
Waterscapes is very nice to deal with and they send you receipts and all
that.
http://www.waterscapesweb.com/orbs.html
Cheers,
Terry
=======================================
Cheers,
Terry
At 11:25 AM 5/27/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Terrell W. Fritz wrote:
>
>> I have a 50kV DC supply but I'll have to see if I have any small
>> spheres around. This one is too big :-))
>>
>> http://hot-streamer.com/temp/Orb.jpg
>
>That's an amazing sphere - what on earth is it? Sort of thing that
>might inspire a sci-fi story: Strange silvery sphere pops into
>existence while a Tesla coil is operating in a basement... "Damn
>those interdimensional portholes - I can't get a stable scope trace..."
>
>Cheers,
>--
>Paul Nicholson,
>Manchester, UK.
>--
Maintainer Paul Nicholson, paul@abelian.demon.co.uk.