My old 4" f/10 Newtonian - now looking for a mount

Wanna make a scope? Or better still, grind a mirror yourself. Or, you have some good tips in making a really useful accessory? This is the place to show what your hands can do...
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mothbhai
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Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:50 pm
Location: Thomson Road

My old 4" f/10 Newtonian - now looking for a mount

Post by mothbhai »

Hi - I recently pulled out my old telescope that I had DiY'd several years ago.

The original telescope was DiY'd by my cousin around 1990. It was based on a kit sold by a small telescope manufacturer in Delhi. The kit included a 4" spherical f/10 primary mirror, a rectangular secondary, and a really cheapo eyepiece. Everything - including the tube, mountings for the mirrors, eyepiece, stand etc had to be DIYed.

The tube was originally made of rolled up aluminum sheets, and everything else - the mirror mounts, focusing assembly etc was made with cardboard. I even made my own Ramsden (and one attempt at a Plossal) eyepieces, barlow, and finder scope - from individual lenses I got from a lab equipment supplies shop.

This served me well for several years. Then I found some matching parts - primary holder with wing nuts for collimating, an adjustable oval secondary, a focusing assembly, couple of eyepieces and a finder scope, and assembled them all around a PVC tube. Now the only component from the original telescope is the primary. It is showing signs of age, but still quite usable.

Here are some pics:

Eyepiece assembly and finder scope on 110mm PVC tube:
Image

The diagonal and primary visible inside the tube:
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FinderScope and very basic Ramsden eyepieces from Tejraj:
Image

Primary mount with collimation screws from Tejraj:
Image

Here is the DIY rings/ clamp I made to mount this scope on a heavy duty camera tripod:
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The wooden base gets bolted on to the plate of a camera tripod.
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The tripod was a steel job which totally got rusted ... so I had to get rid of it a few years back when I put this telescope in storage. Now looking for a replacement. The rings/ clamp is still usable (though the rubber strips are falling apart).

Looking for ideas on how to get this baby on its feet again. I am not sure I will be able to do a major DIY project at this point - so looking for a simple to execute solution/ or perhaps just something I can buy :-)
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Gary
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Post by Gary »

Thanks for sharing and the wonderful pics!
http://www.astro.sg
email: gary[at]astro.sg
twitter: @astrosg


"The importance of a telescope is not how big it is, how well made it is.
It is how many people, less fortunate than you, got to look through it."
-- John Dobson.
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