DNO,
Your power tool might run better because it has twice the starting current available. Other than that, the power is the same.
If you are only running 120V loads on a standard house panel, you can wire the coils in the generator in parallel, and then attach one end of the coils to the netural bar, and the other to both hot bars. Any 240V loads will not work. I have a seen a 240V load (a stove) that had a center tapped transformer in it for the controls (ie. it was hooked up to both 120 legs, and the netural), and acutally popped the fuse on this, so maybe best to open any 240V breakers. Also, any split receptacles (120V outlet on a 2240V breaker) could have thier neutral lines overloaded, so just best to shut off all double pole breakers.
As for the conventions we use, they do represent the coil at one point in time, simply so we dont wire the coils in a dead short configuration. The best way to play with this, I think, is to get two D- cell batteries, and experiment with them in series in and parallel. Cover up the +/- symbols on your meter, and the result on the meter will look just like the AC readings would. One thing you can learn from this, is that neutral or ground is only where YOU choose it to be, you can place the - lead anywhere, and that BECOMES your ground, and you can reverse your +/- leads, and you still get the same reading. If you put one meter lead in the middle of the batteries in series, you will get two legs of 1.5V each, if you measure across the two legs, you get 3.0V, just like our edison wiring system. And you can turn both batteries around, and is still works the same.
Steve