| Project by JerryL | posted 833 days ago | 576 views | 2 times favorited | 10 comments |  |
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This project was for a member of my astronomy club. He bought the tube for a song and needed a portable base. The construction is all 3/4” home store oak plywood. The top of the tube stands about 6” tall when pointed straight up so this thing isn’t small.
I didn’t feel like throwing in the hours of finishing I knew it would take to complete the scope so one weekend I sent my buddy home with a bunch of cutout parts, sandpaper, stain, and a quart of laquer. Four weeks later we put it together in the basement to avoid the heat in the garage.
All of the components are dowelled together. The finished result was surprisingly sturdy. At one point my friend asked if the box holding the tube would be sturdy enough to hold the 30 pound tube assembly. I simply responded by putting it on the ground and bouncing up and down on it. ‘Nuf said ;-).
The Yen/Yang was cut out with a saber saw and with a circle jig on the router table and dressed up with sanding. The white outline is a 1/8” router groove filled with epoxy colored with white paint – I picked that one up from the Woodsmith video podcast. It worked great!
Thanks for looking!
jerry
-- Jerry L.
10 comments so far
Bob Babcock
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1808 posts in 982 days
posted 833 days ago
Wow….something I’ve always wanted to do is build a telescope. What a beautiful base. Great job.
-- Bob, Carver Massachusetts, Sawdust Maker http://www.capecodbaychallenge.org
TomFran
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2514 posts in 890 days
posted 833 days ago
Nice job! Should be fun using it to look into the vast universe.
-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28
Max
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14473 posts in 1169 days
posted 833 days ago
Very nice. I like the use of the colored epoxy looks great…
-- Max "Desperado", Salt Lake City, UT
IowaWoodcrafter
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256 posts in 972 days
posted 833 days ago
Very nice! Makes me wish I still had my telescope.
-- Owen Johnson - aka IowaWoodcrafter
MsDebbieP
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14159 posts in 1056 days
posted 832 days ago
magnificent
great strategy to involve the “customer” :)
-- ~ Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)
mot
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4903 posts in 932 days
posted 830 days ago
I like that! Nice job!
-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)
BarryW
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872 posts in 802 days
posted 801 days ago
nice Dobsonian base…the Yin Yang is an excellent touch…I’m looking around for unique telescope base ideas and such…you gave me some thoughts…thankx
-- /\/\/\ BarryW /\/\/\ Stay so busy you don't have time to die.
JerryL
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38 posts in 943 days
posted 801 days ago
I can’t believe I didn’t thank everyone for these comments. Thank you all.
Barry, There are lots and lots of things you can do to dress up the plywood. I think veneere or an inlay would be a nice touch as well. Then of course there’s Normand: http://www.normandfullumtelescopes.com/ . That guy takes it to the next level. Please let me know when you start your project. I love to see, build, and talk about telescopes.
jerry
-- Jerry L.
Chipper
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22 posts in 786 days
posted 774 days ago
Really nice work!! It inspires me to build a custom mount for my own Dob. I have the melamine base that came with mine, works, but cheap (of course). I’ve always wanted something better.
The strength you built into the mount is important for more than just being able to hold the scope. At high magnifications you can see the effect of people walking by (especially if the soil is dry) – the view will actually shake. While not totally true that strength equals stiffness, your construction will help eliminate, or significantly dampen, mount oscillations.
One suggestion – if you tackle one of these again – when I was comet hunting with my nephew several years ago, we found that star-hopping only took you so far. We finally marked the base in degrees and added a wire pointer. We also mounted a protractor and pointer on one of the side bearings. This was essential for us to nail the faint comet we were searching for. You’re not going to align the telescope to true north using these marks – they just provide a very useful relative measure that gets you from the last sign post star to the object “out in the middle of nowhere”.
-- Steve (Plano, TX)
StevenAntonucci
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179 posts in 834 days
posted 273 days ago
Very cool. I am waiting on the weather to warm up. Since it’s been so cold this winter, I haven’t been able to put my 8” dob out in months…
-- Steven