I just bought a multimeter to check the resistance of a coil among other things. My meter has settings of 200, 2000, 20k etc. I had the dial set on 200, and was getting a reading of 12. What is the resistance then? Do I multiply by 200 to get the resistance?

It states in the book that I need a resistance between 6-30k ohms. Am I there??

So my second question in this is this. Is it better to have a high or lower number? I'm guessing the lower the number, the better, since the electricity will flow better.

And what does each mean? If I need a certain range, and the number is higher, what might the problem be?

What if the number is lower?

12 would be 12 Ohms. The 200 is just the scale.......... 0 to 200 Ohms. Your coil is within spec. To read a higher value, like say 1400 Ohms, you'd set the scale to 2000. (0 to 2000 Ohms)

Additional windings (higher resistance) would give you higher output on the secondary side, but there are limits. You don't want the coil the get REAL hot, you don't want it to arc, you don't want it to burn insulation internally.......... lots goes into design.

Here's how it works. The cannon is just gravy...................
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/cannon/sparky.html

Electronics lesson was good .. cannon site was better :)