Hi Aaron!
As far as the coil goes, I followed the directions for winding as you set forth above. When I energize it with the (+) coming off the top lead and (-) off the bottom, it's a north pole with quite a bit of kick (I tested both the #24 portion and the #26 portion, and both are quite powerful as electromagnets
). I verified north on my magnets by hanging one on a piece of thread and seeing which side faced north, and labeled the side facing that way as "north". I then checked all the rest of my magnets by checking for repulsion with the known north face and labeled all the repulsed sides "north" as well. The core is made up of 2 1/2 inch nails epoxied together with the heads cut off, cut to length, and the points sanded down.
The components are the stock ones suggested by the schematic: A 2N3055 transistor, a 1N914 diode, and a 10 ohm, 1/2 watt resistor (too much wattage? seems unlikely to me). I'm using a battery consisting of 1.5V AA cells--one at 6V/2.3A, and another at 12V/8A. There isn't any deviation from what's suggested up above other than the lack of turns on my coil. Also, it doesn't induce enough current even if I give the rotor a good spin. Pictures follow. In the closeup of the circuit, the clips are
not shorting out with the collector. I decided to go with clips after losing the second transistor and thinking that my diode had blown. This way, I can test components without having to solder/desolder anything.
Also, I connect (+) from my battery to the red lead coming from the top of the coil, and connect the (-) to the emitter (the clip on the bottom right of the circuit closeup). The second transistor blew when I gave the rotor a good spin and it acted as if it were magnetically
braking the rotor--the coil and transistor heated up quite a bit on that run.
I have since verified and reverified that the coil is hooked up correctly to the battery and that the coil produces a north magnetic field out the top that repulses each and every magnet on the rotor. The only thing that looks different in my setup is the number of turns on my coil, but there could be something else that I've overlooked.
