thanks!! i ordered that... and few more that seemed interesting, hehehe
i like your thinking on using older books. the only thing i couldnt find on Lindsay"s site was a book on designing and building transformers. i would love a recomendation for a good older books for building both regular inductive transformers and high freq tesla transformers for some other experements. but back to your dvd.

question about the soft iron keeper.
first is a magnetic field relatable to water pressure in that if you enclose the coil in soft iron and restrict its escape to the outside world to a smaller controlled outlet (I.E. the top halve of a solinoid shaft) the magnetic "pressure" (or maybe "velocity" is a better word)
will be stronger giving us more available work where we want it. much like using a valve on a hose to "spray" water on our lawn.

second (and i may find the answer in the book i bought) i would hazard to guess that field strength is partially related to the size or "mass" of copper in the coil but does the coil "shape" (and iron keeper geomitry) influence the strength of the field, or the "postion" of where i want most of the strength to act on the solinoid shaft. i think i understand what you mean about how no known design criteria is available for bob teals solinoid motor... but!! it is still a solinoid with a copper mass where the geomitry is altered by a soft iron keeper to constrict the magnetic field to the top half of the side walls of the shaft where the air gap is the smallest at the begining of the stroke instead of the end of the stroke. so when i build my first test i think i should be able to use the book you mentioned to calculate the "strength" of the coil mass and test my own geomitry to apply the position of strength.
also how exactly do the magnetic lines of force act on any solinoid shaft. is a standard solinoid shaft pulled from the top surface or are the magnetic lines of force circulating in a clockwise/or counter clockwise fasion through the hollow core of the coil pulling up at the sides of the shaft and is the reason that a standard solinoid is strongest at the end of a stroke because most of side suface area the shaft is all inside the coil and being pulled up by the field rotation? lol am i getting warmer or colder hahaha. maybe there is a book on studing design principles of magnetic lines of force to!!

also following what you are saying about building a model and measuring mechanical strength in say "pounds" do you think it would be a simple linear proportional equation to calculate how much bigger or smaller and identical duplicate of the first test model would have to be to achieve a target shaft work.

lol now for a funny question. in the dvd you mentioned this idea is not overunity but... if as in your example a 1 hp motor might only use 30watts and 1hp equates to 746 watts ideally. doesnt this mean i could strap on a belt driven alternator to the shaft and deliver say 35 or 40 watts and still have slightly less than than 1hp of mechanical energy to use elsewhere making this a self sustaining motor? or am i missing something in the concept of unity

whew!! ok i will stop now

thank again!
Eric