Frank, There are steel blades still sold at Home Depot for painting clean up of windows. Single edge razor blades.
Now if the school official "crazies" won't stomach those, you can simple substitute some plated metal or even a rusty slip of steel. I wonder if a scrap of blue banding metal tape would work?? You are looking for the surface of the steel to be plated and that creating a dissimilar metal junction and hence a diode. You could also simply sub a 1N34 glass diode. I wonder if you could grind off the sharp edge of single edge blades to still use them? They have a metal clamp piece that could be held easily by vice grips to present the sharp blade edge to a grinder wheel. The sweet spot on the old blades was reputed to be along the engraved logo on the blade. I am not sure the mass produced import blades sold for paint scraping still have an etched logo or name section. Stuart K5KVH _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com