Do Tesla turbines work with steam?

yes, a good place to go for practical help on building one is to mail order an instructional manual from Camden Miniature Steam, in the UK:

www.camdenmin.co.UK

the same basic design can be adapted to run on compressed air, steam, or even as a combustion engine.

Respectively, the material requirements differ for each:

a compressed air model can be built using DVD discs i.e better able than a cdrom for surviving the high rotational speeds;

a steam one, I attempted by using precision discs out of an old computer mainframe from the 80's; and

a combustion model would need to have its discs made from steel etc in order to be able to survive the ignition temperatures