Jim Thompson wrote:
On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 22:13:38 -0500, Phil Hobbs
wrote:


Si Ballenger wrote:


I would put a 100 watt lamp in series thereby limiting the current. I
would shave the ends down to points so they heated up rapidly. I put
them into a hollowed out fire brick and made a cheap furnace. Of course
don't look at it; it's like looking at the sun.


The current limiter I saw used a glass pie pan with pieces copper
metal on each side with salty water as the electrolyte. It would
start to steam some when in operation. The furnace was a small
clay flower pot with holes in each side with the carbon rods
sticking inside until they touched.


As a boy, I used an electric teakettle as a ballast for a two-D-cell carbon
arc lamp--worked great.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs


I've used a light bulb in series with a rectifier to charge a car
battery (just make sure that line ground goes to chassis ground ;-)

...Jim Thompson


Going the other direction, I used the elements from a toaster as a load to
discharge wet-cell lead-acid batteries. It was a discharge/charge cycling test.

John