Nice, good! I think part of the reason why the wraps won't stay together is that the terminals are farther apart than the legs of the coil. Put a couple bends in those legs so that the wire capture process doesn't pull it apart. The coil is one thing, the legs are another. Shape them.
another thing, is the direction that the screw turns when you capture your legs. the clockwise motion pulls your coil open. Try reversing the direction of wrap on your coil (and/or which side of the screw it lands on)
Since it seems to be the day to reply to older msgs, I wanted to reply specifically to this one, since I've tried to take it into account with
coils I've built since then.
I've taken that advice about the direction I wrap the wires around the screws, and that is a HUGE help; just tightening the screws down no longer pulls the coil completely apart, so thank you very much for clarifying something I had wondered about from when I first got a
kayfun.
But the thing about "shaping" the legs...
Well, I kinda bend the wire so I can start it around the screw in the opposite direction from how the screw tightens.. but beyond that, I confess, I have so little control over what the wire does, I can't imagine how it's possible to put in those perfect 90 degree bends -- what is holding the coil, while the wire bending is going on? I only have 2 hands! Yes, of course I flame the wire first, otherwise I'd have ZERO control over it. It's just about all I can do to get the coil to stay centered over the air hole while I get the first wire around the first screw, because it just wants to skitter every which way, or slide off the drillbit, or demonstrate in some other way that it actually has a life of its own and is just humoring me by allowing me to fasten it down. I finally got a vise, so I can hold the mod in place to which the base is attached, so I don't have to worry about the base skittering everywhere now, but the coil itself... well, it's just humoring me, basically, and sometimes it apparently just doesn't feel like humoring me.
Andria
). There's no harm in re-torching your wire in mid-process to anneal it and relax it. (just lightly, tho, just enough to get it to start glowing). Roughly speaking, whatever shape it happens to be, when you torch/anneal it, you're establishing a new baseline ("this is the shape I want to be now, not the shape I used to be"). So, I used to get the initial wrapping done, slide it off the drill bit (probably grabbing across both legs with some pliers), and give it a quick torchy. Then back on the drill bit, finalize coil part by pulling on both legs simultaneously (maybe another quick torch, maybe). So now your coil wants to stay that way, and you can start shaping the legs. I used to grab the coil (sans drill bit) on the two ends with parallel action pliers, and then pull and tweak the legs whatever direction I wanted. Usually, I'll do the 90 deg. bends by grabbing just to the coil side of where I want to bend with the tip of some needlenose pliers, and bend.
