Let me first say that I've never done more than build an altitude/azimuth pipe mount for my first scope - one of those cheap 60 mm refractors. But I'm curious about the real scope builders. Here's a chance to show off your expertise in this thread. You don't necessarily have to have ground your own mirror either. Tell us about your failures too and what you would do differently.

I built a 10 inch dob. But I bought the mirrors, the spider, and the focuser.

I built the base from plywood, but I mostly used a circular saw. If I had it to do over, I now have a table saw and I could make it look somewhat better (I'm a little better at woodworking, but I am no cabinet maker).

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

I have made several, most of them junk. My first was an odd idea of how it should work, that did not. It involved a chunk of PVC pipe and some fantasies.

I've ground a number of mirrors, made some nice OTA's, but my favorite scopes are the ones made out of recycle and junk. I make the mirrors out of pyrex pie plates. They yield a 7 to 8 inch f5 mirror, depending on the pie plate. I scavenge old eyepieces and usually make a focuser out of paper tube, ala Dobson. They are usually an Alt / Az mount although I have done some equitorial piers out of old sewer pipe.

It is really astonishing how easy it is to make a telescope. And they don't have to be perfect to see a lot of stuff.

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Telescope_Making

aurora. I'm curious how much a 10-in parabolic mirror costs?

^Here's one source, Tim

http://www.scopetronics.com/atmmirrors.htm

There are others if you look around the 'net....

Thanks JAF! I'm not going to be building my own scope any time soon but I did bookmark that site.

I'm just curious what others have done. Maybe it's a vicarious thrill.

This is from that link. Very interesting!

I bought mine a number of years ago, so prices have no doubt changed since then. So I would also suggest searching the net.

There are also some craft shops that do premium quality mirrors.

__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

I'm in the process of building my first scope now. It's a 12.5" reflector with an f/8 ratio, making it about 8 feet long. I didn't grind my own mirror, although that's on my list of things to do someday. I bought a 50-year-old mirror that came from a Jesuit college observatory in Alabama; it weighs 22 lbs and needs a recoating job, but it works!

I've borrowed a lot of ideas from other ATMs and have been helped much by reading this board.

The OTA is done and working. It's actually a string and tube truss made of aluminum tubes and steel cable. The first views of the moon were incredible; and I saw Comet Holmes the other night with it. WooHoo! The comet was very hard to locate with this 8-foot assembly with narrow field of view and no mount yet.

Am working on the ALT-AZ mount today. Hope to have it working but unpainted by Thanksgiving.

Dave Polan
Mason, Ohio

Very nice Dave! And welcome to the board.

That is my book. I began writing it about a year ago. It goes in fits and starts but it is getting there. Slloooooooowwwwwly. Every thing in there has been done at least once. I had hoped to attract other builders to do chapters on their projects. alas ...

David Davis
Toledo, OR 97391

Well, that's great! Maybe someone from this site will contribute . . .

i've built/assembled 2 small refractors with pvc --- the second made me aware of collimation :-), 20yrs later i've bought a cheap 8"@f5, all the collimation tools are diy .... in process of making the test tools to start grinding on a 10' f/5ish, (got the marking turntable done to take 16" blank and acquired 1 rail from a scrap surface grinder to serve as my test bench)..... also working on SPC900 w/raw mod hoping to do SC for exposure and gain even though the raw mod gives good output.