Well, I've had a play with some 2.5mm high tensile fence wire recovered from a fence I dismantled this weekend with the following results.
Using a timber frame (a couple of cross pieces at each end with 4 lengths of 2 by 1 between) I've made an air spaced coil of 30 turns with a diameter of 0.5m. This is 1m high (so not too unwieldy but big enough to dissipate a fair amount of heat I reckon!). I didn't check the length of wire before I wound it on but it should be about 47m. If its still light when I get home tomorrow I'll try for a picture of it (not that its anything to look at!).
The measured resistance of the whole thing is 1.88 ohms so the fence wire comes out at approximately 25m per ohm.
When I drop the mill in a few weeks, to put it on the permanent mast, I'll run it up on the tractor PTO into this wire wound resistor to see what occurs :-)
Robin - Down Under (or are you Up Over)
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