Thanks Ron, that's close to what I started with, but due to the desire to use a ten turn 10k pot with dial face, I'm kind of stuck with the 10K pot. So far, the massive transistor(163) has handled the current with no problems, but the ripple gets nasty as the voltage and current go up, but I expected that. I get just a hair more than 24 vdc from the bridge and the 10,000 uF cap and on one experiment I did, if fed the base of the 163 with my other power supply and used a 1 ohm load and at 18v to the base, I had 16+ volts out at 15.8 amps and ~3-4volt ripple. At lower voltages around 13 and lower, I'm pretty sure I'll get real close to 20 amps out and a lot smoother. I'll hafta take a photo when I get done.
I was hoping to to use a buck switch mode system, still looking into that, but the high amperage my stop me.