Hi Brownsgas,
With regards to question 1, yes, the production does go up much more when sealing the sides and bottom of the cell, simply because when you do that, you are forcing the electrons to pass THROUGH the plates instead of around it. If you think about, (and I can't remember what law it is, but there is something the guys with thick glasses thought up for this), electricity will always take the shortest route to ground, which in effect means that if you have a bunch of plates in an electrolyte bath with the sides and bottom open, most of the electricity will simply flow from the edges o the plates to the negative side, effectively bypassing most of the plate area because it flows around it. However, when you seal up the sides and bottom of the cell, the electrons have no other route to ground except to travel through each and every single plate, thus forcing all the electricity through the plate area, which , in turn, produces a lot more gas. This was first patented in 1967 by WA Rhodes (patent attached), where he describes the same thing.
To answer question 2, the bottom line is true that you would get better production using thinner SS. There have been a bit of discussion going on as to exactly why this is, some say it's because the electrons travel through the thinner plates more quickly, others say it's because the electrons have much easier way of getting through the plates and don't have to overcome a lot of internal resistance found in each plate, etc. What I can tell you though from my own experimenting is that I have built a 101 plate cell with SS shimstock (0.12mm thickness), and while it works GREAT, the trade off is that you struggle to get your plate spacing right, and also because the SS is so thin, working with it (cross hatching, etc) is very difficult. They often end up warping the edges or bending when you slide them into the cell, which causes inconsistencies with the rest of the plates, reducing the overall efficiency of the cell. But the production is really good once you figure out how to work with the plates properly and how to straighten them out after bending slightly
I have also built a cell with 0.5mm SS plates, which hold up a lot better in terms of ruggedness and spacing, but I have also found that the production is slightly less than the shimstock cell. In my honest opinion though, the difference between 0.5mm and 0.12mm plates is about 5% (with the 0.12mm being the better production), so at the end of the day, thinner plates is not really going to make that big of a difference, especially not when you are running the cell in a resonance drive fashion.
Taking all of this back to what Bob Boyce thinks of this, he likes to use 16 gauge (1.2mm if I am not mistaken) or 18 gauge (1mm) plates, simply because of the high level of stability they provide and the fact that you can work with them in a very high tolerance and still maintain plate integrity.
Over and out
Johan
