I was able to do some really minimal tweaking to make a pretty big difference in the feel of the Code Warrior Jr.

First (and I failed to snap a pic of this),  measured the dit bar and it’s bearing. I found that the length of the bearing was about 0.005mm shorter than bar. I ground (by hand, on a diamond knife sharpening stone) the bottom face of the bar shorter. It took two grind-fit passes to get the height just right, where I could tighten the screw all the way without the bar binding.

There was still a tiny bit of radial play, but the two bars are about the same now.

I also cut shallow countersinks into each arm for the magnetic spring screws.

Not bad for hand cut, I suppose.

Now the screw head can be adjusted far enough to greatly lighten the tension on the paddle.

I also chamfered the edges of the acrylic paddles just a little bit, enough to take the edge off.

For now, I choose to ignore the contact block mounting issue. I will gather some hardware to fix that better. Besides using a bit of threaded rod to secure the mounting better, I think I will also put some sort of spacer inside the mounting holes in the base to stabilize them horizontally. I’m sure I will need to adjust the resting stops once that is done.

Here is my actual unit, ready to use for now.

In other news, Ham Radio Outlet indeed made the cable thing good and it will cost me nothing. Good guys there in Plano.

I got my Gordon West Morse Code course CDs yesterday and listened to a bit of Disk 1 on the way home from work today. Since you need to write down what you copy, it may not be something I can do much of on the commute.