Joule Thief

[stprue]

@ Jeanna

Good job lighting the neons.  Sounds like you have the same one I have.  Have you tried your coil without a resister.  My Hazens coil works much better without one.  I would also recomend trying the tip31c and the 2N3055 as stated above.  I have seen 60v differenced between the 3 types of transistors.  Strange... to me it seems like it depends on the type of coil and winding config. you are using to find the right transister.

Good luck!

[Artic_Knight]

Well there's no question that you know far more then myself.  In fact I have taught myself over the past 8 months what little I know now.  I'm proud of that!

im a strong believer that we are all equally smart we just know different things.  ive been fooling around with electronics and magnetism/magnets since 1999 so ive had some good times.

[stprue]

here is some work on the tesla coil. its a fairly large paragraph bigger than previously posted so i put it in txt format for everyone to download and read at their pleasure.

i think everyone should read this as i think it will show you the direction the joule thief needs to move.  i myself forgot about teslas resonance in electricity and it appears dispite my previous beliefs that a couple members here are right, resonance is good. but the current configurations will not allow us to reach that easily if at all.

That is a great document!  I recomend everyone to read it as it only takes a minute or 2 or3.

@Artic_Knight

What do you think the shape of this would be?  Air coil...humm maybe you could wind around a hollow plastic core.  Thick wire underneath going around the air core (maybe not all the way around, maybe just a few turns) and then thin wire going over everything??? (maybe not the few turns?)  Well time to start experimenting!

[Artic_Knight]

However...
That darn string of leds doesn't light. It works in the house socket, but still not with my secondary.

jenna is there a resistor or ferrite inductor (torroid basically) on the led string?

we are dealing with HF stuff here it doesnt like inductors which is ferrite torroids and stuff, i know we are using them to produce the frequency but they do create a certain degree of resistance and are actually used on computer monitors usb cables and other items to eliminate HF currents! if one of these found its way on the led string it would essentially be a killer for lighting them. resistors and other items could have a similiar effect.

[stprue]

Found a local supplier for toroids and other good stuff. Located 5 miles from my house 

I picked up some High Flux, Low Perm 1.3 inchers today...

http://www.surplussales.com/Inductors/FerToro/FerToro-3.html

Hazens1 is there a particular reason you choose this model over some of the lower perm models of the same toroid?