Late to the party - Another 2.5g

[revance]

Hey... screw making people hoods/stands... how about you make some more of those newtonian telescopes (you did make that one yourself didn't you?). What aperature is your primary mirror? A while back I wanted to make a Schmidt Cassegrain, but I could never find anyone who sold primary mirrors for one, and I wasn't about to try drilling my own hole in a piece of glass that expensive.

 

Oh BTW, did you grind your own mirror or did you buy it?

[sdnesmith]

Hey Glenn, I think you could probably get a very nice hood from MattGecko for the price of making one yourself especially when you consider the time and scuffed up knuckles involved. He finishes his with a very nice wood stain as well. Do a search under the username MattGecko and you can probably find a link to his website.

 

Narkon and revance:

 

Thanks for the compliments. Yep, I made the telescope using a 15 year old jigsaw (old sparky), a hand mitre box saw, a hand planer, and a cordless drill. The mirror I bought off eBay for $150. It's an 8" mirror with a focal length of 48". The whole entire scope cost in the $500-600 range. I could have purchased a tube scope for $450, but I wanted ultra portability.

 

It's based on the plans by a guy named Barry Leger. He wrote an article in the December 2000 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine showing how to make an ultralight 8" scope. The whole thing, with 15lbs of counterweights weighs around 40 lbs. It breaks down into 3 sections: the focuser ring, the truss rods, and the base, so it's easy to take down and throw in the car.

 

I have considered building a work bench in the garage and trying to build a 16-18" scope in the same fashion, strictly for myself. It was quite a learning experience working with wood by hand basically. Made the hood a lot easier to make that's for sure.

 

Oh, btw, I am south of Missouri City.

 

Shawn

[revance]

The only thing I don't like about that style of newtonian telescope is you can't use an equatorial mount... so you have to constantly adjust everything to track something in the sky. However you can't build your own equatorial mount very easily and that drastically increases the cost. Looks real nice though!