Inspired by Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru, when Jim was faced with the near-impossible task of winding hundreds of turns of wire through a toroid core, he cheated. 🙂

By cleanly breaking the core in half and gluing one half to a spindle chucked in an electric drill, the winding became fairly easy.  Super gluing the halves together afterward produced a magnetically and physically sound toroid again.

Several folks at the space helped Jim with his experiment, holding wire, counting turns, operating the drill, and of course taking pictures.  Many thanks to Ti Leggett for his efforts and skills as the photographer.  There are more details in Jim’s project notes, but here’s the video: