Hand-Grinding a Quartz Crystal

I thought it was going to be a typical Tuesday of helping Elmer by doing log entries as he proceeded with the boat-anchor CW contest.

Actually, I’ve yet to have a typical “work” day (if you want to call it that) as one doesn’t know what one is getting into until stepping across the threshold into the Kasbah garage inner sanctum. This particular Tuesday was no different. I’m not complaining, mind you; actually I like the variation. But I am wandering from the subject at hand.

Somewhere in the process of Elmer (a.k.a. Eric Nichols, KL7AJ) doing some boat anchor CW contesting while I was attempting to read an article he wrote, he asked me if I would be interested in learning to grind a quartz crystal so we, meaning me, could change the frequency to a higher one and thus make it useful for ham operations.

Of course, I said, “Sure.” So off we trod to the workbench. So much for the plan of contest logging; besides, the