[Milsurplus] Let's appreciate crystals

[Dave Merrill]

One of the many companies was the Good-All Mfg. Co. of Ogallala, Nebraska.

Some years ago my wife and I were passing through Nebraska and stopped in
Ogallala for lunch. We discovered there was a local history museum in an
old Victorian house once occupied by the town doctor, so of course we paid
a visit.

Upstairs, tucked away in a small room, was a display case with items that
had been made by local companies. My eye caught a familiar object: an
FT-243 crystal unit marked 'Good-All.'

They had been a small-time maker of paper capacitors and became one of the
hundreds of crystal manufacturers once WWII loomed.  IIRC, a card in the
case made the dubious claim that Good-All had discovered the method of
finishing crystal blanks to their desired frequency by etching with acid.
It's more likely that the QCS shared the technology with all the companies
making crystals for the war effort.

I've managed to find a few FT-243 crystals for the BC-1335 that bear their
name.

--... ...-- Dave N9ZC

On Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 7:27 PM Bob Camp <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:

> Hi
>
> The “big deal” with synthetic quartz was its lack of twinning. You need
> the entire blank to be left handed or right handed. If it’s “some of each”
> the piezo polarity will shift and cancel out. Natural quartz was not very
> consistent. The result there was that you lost a noticeable percentage of
> what you cut.
>
> During WWII something over a hundred small outfits made crystals. It was
> very much something a lot of folks got into. After the war, very few of
> them survived.
>
> Bob
>
> > On Oct 28, 2025, at 7:09 PM, hwhall at aol.com <hwhall at compuserve.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'd guess that the lab-grown crystals were a lot easier to orient for
> cutting & may not have needed to be x-rayed as much or at all. The natural
> position of the axes should be apparent & twinning not an issue (presumably
> controlled for). So, maybe folks like those who are intense enough to try
> to make vacuum tubes would think about making their own crystals...
> >
> > Wayne
> > WB4OGM
> >
> > On Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at 09:56:09 AM MDT, Bob Camp <kb8tq at n1k.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > If you worked in a crystal plant 20 or 30 years later, you would see
> folks doing a lot of the same things. The methods they used had not changed
> as much as you might think. The big change was going to synthetic quartz
> rather than natural for the “feed” into the process. Yes, the crystal
> packages did change a bit over the years ….
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >> On Oct 28, 2025, at 11:18 AM, Ken Kinderman <scr274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Just watched "Crystals Go to War" on youtube.
> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHenisSTUQY
> >> Never again will I take the humble FT-243, DC-10 and their cousins for
> granted. I suppose if we thought about it, we would appreciate the labor-
> and skill-intensive process, but this film drives it home.
> >> These guys and gals were heroes...
> >> - hand selecting and hand grading the quartz
> >> - dipping the raw stone into oil to identify the axes, hours at a time:
> bare hands, no gloves
> >> - further grading with the casual use of X-rays: I notice only one
> young lady with a bare minimum protective apron
> >> - crystal dust
> >> - bare hands in hot soapy water all day
> >> - fingers inches away from razor thin, diamond edged, spinning saw
> blades
> >> - skillfully evaluating the quartz slices for imperfections and maximum
> yield
> >> - acid fumes
> >> - constant exposure to watery abrasive slurry
> >> - only once did I see protective gloves: a young lady removing blanks
> from the "acid bath"
> >> - coaxing the blanks, one by one, onto frequency.
> >> - putting little metal labels on with tiny screws, no doubt "girls work"
> >> I will think twice the next time I abandon an oddball frequency crystal
> as unusable. Each one is a gem.
> >>
> >> 73,
> >> Ken
> >> W2EWL
>
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