How to make your own stylus/ shank?

[Lunatic_Hoarder]

Hey there! I’m working on making my own stylus to cut and emboss with. However rather than using a CVT diamond or sapphire shanks I want to try experimenting with various minerals and gems to see what sort of results they produce.

However; I have no experience in mounting gemstones to shanks and need help with a couple of questions:

• Proper mounting of the gemstone to the shank: This is the biggest issue so far in that I have no idea how the shank should be constructed? How should the gemstone/ mineral meet with the metal shank?

• What materials should I use for the shank? How will affect the sound?

• What adhesive should I use? Ideally I would like to be able heat the cutting edge but I have no idea what adhesive will stand up to the heating element temperatures without melting? -or at the very least becoming soft enough to loosen the gemstone.

• Attaching the Nitol thermal wire: how is the wire attached to the shank? Is it simply wrapped round the gem or is there an intermediary material to allow even thermal distribution?

Any advice and resources on this particular subject would be greatly appreciated!

[dmills]

There is a decent explanation of the stylus geometry in "Physical Processes Of Cutting Gramaphone Records" collected by Fritz Nygaard (Note that he mostly comes from an Ortofon perspective).

The questions of the shank geometry and mounting the jewel are IIRC discussed in one of the two JAES 'Disk Recording Anthology' volumes (Which are totally worth the time if you want to get into the weeds), and yes, fit here matters, as does the difference between the hardness of an anodised receptacle on the torque tube and the (hopefully softer) metal of the shank. This is something some modern stylus manufacturers have gotten wrong with the 320 style shanks.

Heater was generally thin nichrome wire maybe 6 turns wound on the sapphire and secured with a little epoxy, that is the least of your problems.

[Estrada]

Hi,

I've been making my own styli for a while now. I have by no means perfected it but I have been successfully cutting records with my own diamond styli.

I make my own presto style shanks. These are relatively simple with the right tools. I use a small Emco Unit 3 hobby lathe. Mounting the diamonds is a quite tricky because everything is so small. The other issue with the presto style shanks is getting the diamond face aligned with the flattened index on the shank. I'm considering ditching the index and just aligning the stylus visually.

For the shanks, I use a 1.6mm aluminium Tig welding rod. It has a high percentage of magnesium which makes it a little bit harder, I've found this beneficial because after I've drilled a hole to insert the diamond into, the walls of the shank are very thin, the extra hardness helps to stop them crumbling. I always aim to get the diamond fitting snuggly, preferably with a little bit of friction. If the diamond wobbles around it can end up crooked, also more likely to fall out if the glue gets weakened. The Neumann style shanks are very small and I think will be very tricky to make. I do intend to have a go at some point though.

For adhesive, I'm just using super glue at the moment, though I'd like to get a decent epoxy or dental cement. I think super glue can stand a little bit of heat but not much. I'm not really using heating wire much. Heating wire can just be wrapped around the gem and it will work without any glue. You have to prevent the chip from touching the wires though, and a blob of clue might help with this. Otherwise the chip will melt and stick to the hot wires which makes a lot of mess. Vacuum is essential if using heating.

In terms of stylus materials; If you are making an embossing cone there are a few options, most common would be tungsten or synthetic sapphire. I think other types of harder metals can be used. For cutting, there are likely fewer options, particularly for cutting plastic. Diamond is really the only option here if you want any longevity. It may be possible to make a cutting stylus from tungsten but I don't think it would last long. Even sapphire will not last cutting plastic, I sharpened a sapphire once and did a test cut with it. Started out sounding nice, after about 5 minutes there was heaps of background noise.

The really hard part though is sharpening the styli. This takes a lot of gear, time and patience. Diamond is particularly hard to grind and it can take a long time. To cut a groove the edge had to be flawless. If you are using sapphire for a cutting stylus, this is also difficult to do as you need to form burnishing facets which are about 3-5 microns wide. It is possible though, I have managed to successfully sharpen once sapphire with facets. It is certainly a journey though, I've been at it a couple of years and still have a long way to go.

Best of luck, let us know if you have any luck.