Fellow Hobbyists and Mad Scientists

Primarily Electrical with Websites!

And MAD/SCIENTIFIC HOBBYIST web resources in general

Here is my list of links to fellow nuts who have fun building things and sometimes blowing things up. Followed by links to many resources for hobbyists/tinkerers and Dr. Frankensteins, etc. Updated 10/15/2022.

Start with myself, Don Klipstein Jr. in case you got here from outside.

First, links to hobbyists with websites, mostly electrical:

Sam Barros, who is what I was about 25 years ago and maybe then some. Tesla coils, plasma globes, flyback transformer drivers, photos of results, chemistry disasters at home, MUCH MORE!

Mike's Electric Stuff - another goodie, with Tesla coils, Geissler tubes, and all sorts of oddball electrical components and devices.

Bill Beatty, whose website is a major amateur scientist resource. Includes a little fringe stuff!

The Sparkbangbuzz site - newer location! This site shows how to make homemade cathode ray tubes, homemade nitrogen lasers that use air at atmospheric pressure as the lasing medium, zinc negative resistance oscillators, etc.

Sam Goldwasser's Laser FAQ is huge and has plenty of resources!

Just for instance, have a look at this tidbit for nitrogen laser construction links - with plenty of homebrewers and some of those TEA lasers that use air at atmospheric pressure as the lasing medium!
N2 Laser Construction References and Links (some now dead), within the Nitrogen Laser section of Sam's Laser FAQ. The nitrogen laser builders also largely work with high voltage!

For the entire Sam Goldwasser's laser FAQ: Links to it are in my Laser Page, at Don's Laser Links.

Note that Sam Goldwasser also has plenty of stuff on electronics/appliance repair, much of it very educational as to how things such as microwave ovens, TVs, CD players, etc. work! His Laser FAQ has links to that early on!

Craig Johnson, a major LED nut and world famous LED flashlight tester. He also tests lasers and small remote control aircraft including helicopters. URL change noted 10/13/2022, found not working 10/15/2022, another domain change noted 10/21/2022, with this new new location only partially working as of 10/23/2022.


Mad Hobbyist Web Resources - info and supplies!

Lasers - HOMEBREW LASERS, plus info on just getting one, and playing with it, etc:

Try my LASER TOP PAGE. Includes links to a few different locations of the world-famous, mighty Sam Goldwasser Laser FAQ which is more like a large online book nowadays. Links to Craig Johnson's laser page, another homebrew laser site, power boost hacking of some laser pointers, etc.

American Science and Surplus

The hub of the Tesla Coil Web Ring.

The Bell Jar!

Various vacuum experiments, including making an X-ray machine with ordinary 6BK4 vacuum tubes common in older color TV sets! A bit of less-vacuum-related stuff such as high voltage also!

The X-ray from 6BK4 article!

A page (by Bill Beatty) on sources of low-voltage-DC-powered high-voltage-high-frequency-AC-output modules, typically used as electronic ballasts for miniature cold cathode fluorescent lamps. Along with a hack for more voltage. I doubt the claim of 5KV, maybe get roughly half that with the hack, but these can come in handy for some things!
Keep in mind for rectifying multikilohertz AC to DC - Use rectifiers/diodes of high speed or high frequency types rather than 1N4000-whatevers and others made for low frequency use!

DiscoverCircuits list of links to many thousands of schematics!

Techlib.com, a significant electronic circuits library! Includes a nuclear radiation detector, mentioned as a "nuclear war detector". I advise using the search function with good keywords such as "neon" - at this date many goodies there appear to me only findable by that route!


Written by Don Klipstein.

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