[Boatanchors] Crystal sets

[Roger Ruszkowski]

Gene,

I hear the best galena come from a place in Kansas. I know not where.
 
Larry Bidwell at Glendora Gems Glendora California LA County provided me my galena lumps crystals.
 
I sanded two sides flat on the lapidary equipment at the Glendora High School.
 
I drilled two hole in a 3/4 square of copper from the lapidary copper.
Made up a ring of copper about 1/4 high.
 
Got out the aggressive solder flux and torch.
 
Soldered the ring to the square, floated a nice glob of solder in the
ring added a good blob of rosin solder and plunged the galena into the pool of solder
so that the solder over flowed the ring.

Held the galena ring and solder in place on the copper square with a stick and wiped
the excess solder off around the ring and square.

Let that all cool.
I had a galena crystal set in a cold solder joint with two holes I could mount the 
crystal to a board and attach wires.

I cleaned and buffed the whole assembly up on the lapidary equipment.

I used a length of 10 -32 threaded rod and two knurled nuts on the rod for the whisker post.

I make a big flat washer with a #10 hole to go between the knurled nuts.

A nut and pair of washer at the bottom of the threaded rod made the wire attachment point.

I soldered a ball point pen spring to the special big flat washer.

I soldered a short bit of silver wire beat and filed to a point to the other end of the spring.

I was using some aggressive industrial flux to get the ends of the spring tinned
and then was able to stick the parts together with rosin flux and solder.

You will find a height for the whisker on the post. 

You can swing the whisker across the face of the crystal. 

You can bend the silver wire angle to change the length of the swing arc.

You can move the crystal about on the base until you find a hot spot on the crystal
and then stick the crystal base with a bit of super glue and the put the mounting screws in.
Try some double sided tape so you can move the mounted crystal around.
The kids beat the hell out of the crystal poking at it and it was replaces a couple times.

I put every thing on a board some nice red wire on PVC coil forms 

Some nice binding post.

It amazed the Kids 

For sure do at least one in your life.

We tried to solder small crystals to pennies.
You can not melt the galena so you mostly get cold solder joints.

We took to shaping the small crystals using files and tweezers to get trapezoid shapes.

Glob the whole crystal under solder on to a copper back plate.

Then file the top off the solder glob to re expose the crystal face.

We would do this with a propane torch 

Build the set with a 1n34 and get a good working design with coils and tuning and connections.

then add your own detector. 

Have Fun

Roger AI4NI