Well, it's taken a lot more than a couple of weeks, almost 18 months actually, but the Covert
Pier is almost finished. You
may remember the thread on the boring of the hole to mount the
pier, a 255mm wide, 760mm deep hole in sandstone bed rock:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=58252
The
pier itself was made from several pieces of 'donor' steel I had lying around as shown below, weighing 50Kg each.
Here are the two donors, along with the two forged steel pipe flanges that will join the two parts together. The
flanges are quite hefty, weighing about 20Kg each. That's a Panoptic 35 and a Nagler 13 for reference!
After measurements in the hole were checked, the first thing to do was cut their heads off, then make a 300 x 300 top
plate out of 16mm steel, then cut a hole in the bottom of one where the top plate will be welded on. Essentially we're
cutting the tops off, welding a flange on top of each. One then gets glued in the hole in the sandstone, the other is
flipped upside down and the flanges bolted together.
The top plate also needed a hole cut in it, as this is where the EQ6 mounting plate will be inserted. This EQ6 mounting
plate comes from the top of a Skywatcher EQ6 extension
pier. A hole is also required in the side of the
pier to access the
EQ6 centre tie-down bolt.