Just a tiny post about how fun it can be burning wood with electricity!!!

This is however ridiculously dangerous as the transformer outputs about 2800 VAC and is mains isolated… which means that your household safety switches will not trip if you touch the wires!

Now that all of that boring safety stuff is out of the way, I simply used cheap and nasty scrap copper switch wire to connect straight to the secondary outputs from the microwave transformer… I must say that this insulation is totally inadequate for high voltage, and I would advise that you don’t touch the wires while the thing is on! I did try it with the capacitor and voltage doubling circuit in place, but the results were totally rubbish.

For best results I used a solution of bicarbonate of soda painted liberally onto the timber, making sure to turn the power off before the whole thing totally incinerated itself!

Have fun, and don’t touch live wires!