I’ve always been fascinated with tesla coils and the amount of physically-viewable electricity jolt they can send across the thin air.   We’ve had a post before on how to make your own tesla coil but here’s another great tutorial showing you how to build one yourself, all in the safety (arr…perhaps the opposite) of your home without endangering others.

The author mentioned that all this can be conjured up for rather cheap and from everyday hardware/household materials:

The total cost came to around $25, being that I already had the wood, Snapple bottles, PVC, and glue

The most interesting part about this DIY is that the author uses homemade “salt-water capacitors” instead of commercial ones.

I decided to go the cheaper route and build a capacitor. The simplest way is to make a salt water capacitor, using salt water, oil and tin foil. Wrap the bottle in foil, and fill it with water. Try to get equal amounts of water in each bottle, as it helps to keep the power output stable. The maximum amount of salt you can put in the water is .359mg/mL, but this ends up being a lot of salt, so you can tone down the amount a lot. Just make sure that you use he same amounts on salt and water.

These might also have some other uses too other than making a tesla coil.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this great tutorial, check out the full tutorial here on instructables.

Also see the video of this very tesla coil in action:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode