Jon Danniken wrote:
... Any of the MOTs I have "played" with saturate
above 90VAC with the secondaries shorted;

I suppose that one needs a 'scope to see saturation? At any rate,
saturated or not, it works and I'm not going to worry about keeping it
out of saturation, unless it was a trivial fix.

how much input current are you seeing on this thing?

One measurement I took started at 13A & climbed to 16 as it cooked.

Bob