Resurrecting an MT160

[Rainmaker]

As a favour for my club, the Canberra Astronomical Society, I volunteered to tidy up a very old Takahashi MT160 that had been unused and unloved for quite some time.....

By chance a friend and the club's Outreach Officer brought the rather sad looking Tak to an observing session two weeks ago.....

Long story short, the MT160 had been clad in starry fabric that had been glued onto the OTA and inside it had sheets of flocking paper that had long ago lost its grip on the metal tube....

I spent three days tidying it up and here she is:

[AstroViking]

The finished OTA looks so much better than what you started with. I can't fathom why someone would do that...

What about the inside of the tube? How did you resurrect that?

Cheers,
V

[Rainmaker]

Thanks, I'm pleased with the result, the scope will now be used for outreach at Mt Stromlo and will be mounted on an Eq mount which I will convert to manual Alt-Az. Just need to find or make some 8" tube rings.

The nice starry design is actually someone's bedsheet material that was glued onto the tube and then varnished over. The painful removal process revealed the reason for the unusual coating, there were numerous holes and dents in the tube hidden by the fabric. I then spent a day panel beating the tube back into shape so that I didn't need filler under the primer. The extra holes needed to be welded up (all 9 of them) then the patches were ground flat etc etc...... then etch primer and several coats of semi-gloss paint.
The inside was cleaned up and painted with textured flat black paint.

The old mirror has some coating defects but not enough to worry about, the scope was tested alongside my TOA130 after collimation and the optics are superb.

[croweater]

Great job Matt. You achieved a lot in just 3 days. Excellent result.
Cheers, Richard.

[Rainmaker]

:thanx: :thumbsup:

[FlashDrive]

Matt .....Job well done ...!! :)

[ausastronomer]

Really nice restoration job Matt. The scope looks great!

I can't believe someone would let such a nice scope get to the state it was in. I've used a couple of Takahashi MT-130's and MT-160's over the years and they have outstanding optics. Certainly optics worthy of restoration.

Cheers
John B

[AdamJL]

Agreed, this is remarkable work for 3 days! Wow.