Light Shroud for 16 inch Dobsonian

[bluesilver]

Hi, I am sure many here have already done this, so i am hoping someone can help me out here.

I am looking to put a fabric light shroud aorund a 16 inch Dobsonian.
It is one of those Skywatcher collapsible Dobsonians which have the 3 truss tubes.

I see that you can get some online, but after many phone calls to all the shops that have them listed, nothing will be in stock until after October.

So i figured i could make one and would most likely be better than the ones you can by.
I had one for a 10" which have about 3 or 4 poles sewn into the fabric, and after a while the fabric looses tension and sags in between the poles blocking some of the light.

So was really interested to here and see what other members on here have used for a light shroud and how they went about it.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Peter.

[glend]

Did you try Andrews? They show them for $79 (SWA-shroud-16). But they get them from TASCO the importer, you could ring them at Brookvale and ask directly. If out of stock everywhere then you could try a US Skywatcher retailer. How hard did you look?

I had a nice one on my 16" GSO Strut Dob , but shroud droop is always an issue. You can buy some wall cavity snake plastic at Bunnings, and use that to make some hoops to hold the shroud out of the light path. Connect the end together by a small piece of plastic tubing (also from Bunnings). Hoops attach to the struts with adhesive Velcro.
Pretty sure there was a thread about making them, if you care to learn to use the Search feature here.

[bluesilver]

Thanks for the reply,
Yes rang pretty much every telescope shop i could find and all are out of stock as so is the importer Tasco.

Yes been trying to find out about making them on here as i am sure someone has done it before, but still no luck with the search function in finding anything on here.

The wall cavity snake plastic sounds like a good idea, never thought of that.
Think i will go with that idea as it would be much better than what you can buy.
Then get some good fabric to sew to it.
Appreciated.

[gaseous]

A chap at Astrofest made his own shroud for an 18" scope using some sort of spandex material he bought from Spotlight, and it looked the goods. I'm looking into making my own too, as the standard Skywatcher shroud that came with my 20" dob is total b@lls.

[bluesilver]

Thanks for the reply, sounds like the fabric i need to get.
A good project for the weekend,
Yes the standard skywatcher ones are not the best.
Appreciated.