Hi Everyone,
I thought I'd post my progress for my current build. This is my first attempt at ATM, and I have to give a big THANK YOU to mental4astro for all his advice.
As you might have seen, I've been selling off a lot of my gear as I'm getting out of imaging and back into visual astronomy. This is mainly because I simply don't have much time for this hobby anymore. So I began looking for a good dob... but in the end I decided to make a dob base for my 10" Sky-Watcher newt as this would be much cheaper and I hope MUCH better than cheap commercial dob bases.
So I came up with a plan with much assistance from mental, see attached plan. The cut outs are meant to represent celestial bodies. I stole mental's use of the large disc with a smaller disc on either side, this symbolises how Galileo first pictured Saturn. My design on the side is meant to resemble a moon disappearing into the planets shadow... but looks a bit more like a snowman!
So to date I have cut out all the parts and have them sanded awaiting assembly. I'm using 15mm marine ply and I've sourced virgin teflon AND secured a massive sheet of ebony star
(must be the last piece in QLD!!!). I was stoked to find the ebony star, I rang around and visited loads of kitchen places, in the end I went to a benchtop wholesaler and the foreman found their last piece tucked up the back of the warehouse, its 650mm x 2.2 meters long! And the best bit... I offered $45 as it was old stock and they happily obliged!
My plan is to stain a medium walnut colour and finish with satin exterior poly. Also I've purchased an Argo Navis that will be installed. Not sure yet how I'm going to mount the handset....
I've been enjoying the build, this is my first time cutting circles with a router, but after using my brother's little laminate router I simply have to have one!
Anyways, here are some pics.
Dave.