[Milsurplus] Quartz xtals one more time

[hwhall@aol.com]

For anyone interested in cutting their own quartz slabs, visit a large gem & mineral show. There's usually one or two vendors selling lab-grown quartz crystals. Perfect material with well defined faces to determine axis directions, etc. Complete crystals will be a little expensive but some will have cut or broken chunks too with some of the key face features present. And there's a lot of gem-cutting materials useful to a DIY crystal grinder. Diamond saws, abrasive grits, & so on.

Wayne
WB4OGM

On Sunday, January 11, 2026 at 12:02:57 PM MST, Charlie L. <mjcal79 at gmail.com> wrote: 

Be sure to look up QST 1934, think it is Dec and Jan.  A two part series on making your own crystals, how to visually sight them to determine proper cut, including overtone, how to build a saw to cut slivers, and the Holy Grail of crystal info, the formula for the thickness of the  initial cut based on desired freq.  Radio grade Brazilian quartz is still available,and there is really no reason that if you really needed one, you could not roll your own.

Charlie in NC