Start with myself, Don Klipstein Jr. in case you got here from outside.
The Spark, Bang, Buzz site - older location! Lots of goodies can be found here - homebrew cathode ray tubes, various homebrew semiconductors, etc. The cathode ray tubes are cold cathode ones that can be made with the kind of vacuum pump that refrigeration technicians have. Smaller ones may work from the vacuum obtainable from a used refrigerator compressor.
Just for instance, have a look at this tidbit for nitrogen laser
construction links - with plenty of homebrewers and some of those TEA
lasers that use air at atmospheric pressure as the lasing medium!
N2
Laser Construction References and Links, within the Nitrogen Laser
section of Sam's Laser FAQ. The nitrogen laser builders also largely work
with high voltage!
For the entire Sam Goldwasser's laser FAQ: Links to it at various locations are in my Laser Page, at Don's Laser Links.
Try my LASER TOP PAGE. Includes links to a few different locations of the world-famous, mighty Sam Goldwasser Laser FAQ which is more like a large online book nowadays. Links to Craig Johnson's laser page, another homebrew laser site, power boost hacking of some laser pointers, etc.
The Science Toys Site, with info on making and buying them.
The hub of the Tesla Coil Web Ring.
New link added 11/27/2006, and it's a big one!
The Bell Jar!
Various vacuum experiments, including making an X-ray machine with ordinary 6BK4 vacuum tubes common in older color TV sets! A bit of less-vacuum-related stuff such as high voltage also!
Some articles at or linked from The Bell Jar!
A page (by Bill Beatty)
on sources of low-voltage-DC-powered high-voltage-high-frequency-AC-output
modules, typically used as electronic ballasts for miniature cold cathode
fluorescent lamps. Along with a hack for more voltage. I doubt the claim
of 5KV, maybe get roughly half that with the hack, but these can come in
handy for some things!
Keep in mind for rectifying multikilohertz AC to DC - Use
rectifiers/diodes of high speed or high frequency types rather than
1N4000-whatevers and others made for low frequency use!
Techlib.com, a significant electronic circuits library! Includes a nuclear radiation detector, mentioned as a "nuclear war detector". I advise using the search function with good keywords such as "neon" - at this date many goodies there appear to me only findable by that route!
Please read my Copyright and authorship info.
Please read my Disclaimer.