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The tube was originally made of rolled up aluminum sheets, and everything else - the mirror mounts, focusing assembly etc was made with cardboard.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:
The diagonal and primary visible inside the tube:
FinderScope and very basic Ramsden eyepieces from Tejraj:
Primary mount with collimation screws from Tejraj:
Here is the DIY rings/ clamp I made to mount this scope on a heavy duty camera tripod:
The wooden base gets bolted on to the plate of a camera tripod.
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 :-)
