You can create a point contact transistor with a great amount of care (and lots of expletives as you try to find *two* sweet spots) as a "Proof of Concept" exercise. The results won't be pretty or robust or offer much gain, although the transistor produced is almost certainly going to show a very high noise level, if it works at all.
Making your own vacuum tube (thermionic valve) is more likely to produce a robust and usable device, given enough care:
A single strand of extraflex has made many a fuse
NT
I remember making a junction diode as part of a first year lab at university!
Cat's whisker?
No, a *junction* diode. Melting an indium bead into a piece of germanium.
I got to make a Josephson junction in a practical. That was a cat's whisker of sharpened, oxidised niobium wire pressing against a niobium plate.
John
Yes, valves you make yourself are a much more worthwhile pursuit than semis. If I ever get the time some day I'd like to give it a bash.
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