OK, yesterday I finally tracked down a local supplier of magnet wire after I found out that the wire I ordered over the internet wouldn't arrive for TWO WEEKS. At any rate, I finally wound 600 turns of #22 and #26 on my core (after removing the 388 turns that were already sitting on it ), hooked up the alligator clips, and success!

Some preliminary tests showed interesting results. It went at a pretty good clip when I had the 12V battery hooked up, but it seemed to run faster with only 6V (going by the pitch the bearings were putting out). Curiouser and curiouser. The current draw was only about 1/4 of an amp with the 6V, which should go down once I replace the 10 ohm resistor with a 680.

Also, my coil runs hot too. So much so, that loosened the epoxy on the back side of the coil spool! My guess as to why it's running hot is that there's just too much juice going through it, which upping the resistance should help with--I mean, come on, 10 ohms isn't much. At any rate, I hope to post some more rigorous results here once I get my coil back together.

And oh... The questions, the questions... More later.