Wound a DBM with a binocular core today.

I sure could use some 10 year old eyes and nimble fingers for this one but it was well worth the effort.
I'm using a SMALL binocular and #34 wire. The build begins with 3 wires twisted together.

I put it on the ruler so you can see the size.

You make a hair pin and pass one end through each hole. Leave a loop long enough to do your hookup.

After making 8 passes through the core on each side I unravel the wires. Yes that #34 is quite small but I could not get more than 8 or 9 passes through the hole in the binocular.

I have all the wires untwisted and am now looking at 12 wires. After stripping a little insulation from the ends I can use my ohmmeter to ring them out.

Before I start ringing wires I need a place to put them. There will be 4 diodes in a ring, a RF input, a LO input and an AF output. The AF will have a ground and it will tie to the center tap of the LO transformer so I just used the LO input for it.

I put the core on the block with a piece of double sided tape and a pin at each tie point

Now I use the ohmmeter to find a coil. The first two wires that ring out will be my input.

So I put a winding on the RF and a winding on the LO. This leaves 4 leads (2 coils) on each side. I check for a coil and then use one end to tie with the free end on the other end of the core. This give two coils in series. the two tied together will be the center tap. One center tap is AF output and the other center tap is ground.

Now a little solder on each pin for the diode ring and put the diodes on them.

The finished product. It is not as pretty as a store bought one but it works pretty well. It does need a 7dbm drive (.7 volt peak).