slayer exciter barely works, my first high voltage and diy coil project

[mookie1590]

Just trying to better understand this. I'm getting very poor sparks from my secondary, so small you need the light off and to be looking for it.

I do know its oscillating, I'm getting a sine wave on the base of my TIP41 transistors, I was using TIP31, but the primary coil killed them.

How it did, is my question. I put my oscilloscope probe on  the collector of the circuit. And The voltage here is 100volts. Is there supposed to be high voltage on the primary like this,  I'll post a pic from my scope. I never measured the output of the secondary, it could kill my scope.

The Led that is connected to the base to ground does light up.

Also the coil I made by hand is a single layer going all the way up a paper towel tube. Should I instead of doing one layer at 300 turns, do 3 layers at 100 turns that would equal a total of 300 turns.

My primary is about 3 turns.

also, I found that pulling out the base resistor that turns on the transistor at the start up doesn't affect the circuit. It still runs, until I touch the secondary, then it shuts down and I have to put the resistor back in to get it to work. I thought the secondary coil was supposed to pull the transistor down to turn it off, but it still runs without the resistor. unless touched. But it does work and oscillates. I'm confused as to why it can still run without the resistor. Unless of course I've made a mistake. Or I'm misunderstanding what each variable is supposed to do.

The photo labeled 10.jpg is the scope across the primary coil. ground clip to one side, probe to the other.  My oscilloscope used a 5volt wall wort so I'm assuming it isnt ground referenced like other scopes. the second photo is negative rail to the collector of the transistor, says pic 9.jpg

I can get a photo of my coil setup later if need be. Thanks for any help with this.