I wanted to make a socket for swapping out crystals on some of my development boards.  Using .1"/2.54mm machined pin headers was a good start as the pins from a crystal fit in quite well and the spacing is perfect.

The question now became the best way to go about it.  I could break off two separate pins and solder them in individually, but from experience soldering in and nicely aligning single pins is rather tedious.  I could do board revisions to have a middle, unused pin resulting in soldering a segment of three pins that would make things a bit easier,  but that wouldn't help with the existing boards I have on hand. 

The chosen solution was to simply remove the solder leg of the middle pin, resulting in a three pin segment that will fit in unmodified crystal footprints.

I ended up using a rotary tool with a cut-off wheel to grind away the middle pin.  While it was a little tedious, I actually enjoyed it in a strange way.  I did the grinding before breaking the segment off to made the grinding process easier to control. I then broke off the segment.  I could have tried my side-cutters, but I didn't want to risk damaging them. 

A board with one installed:

It works well and doesn't look too bad.  I have some crystals with shorter legs that make for a nicer appearance, but I was pressed for time to dig for them.