Steam Punk...l like it
Thanks for the kind words....many hours of cutting, drilling and grinding in this project.
Raining here so I set the scope up in my shed and it works as I hoped. Slewed around with my cordless drill as a motor as much as possible, the slip clutch doing it's job on the RA and the Dec clamp hanging on too.
Paint...yes gloss black same stuff Matt used on the rest of the mount, pretty tuff stuff it is too. I do have a can of Brass spray and will experiment on some scraps.
Sadly won't be on the road to Nhill or anywhere else this year, next year definitely, as there are a couple of niggles in the worm gear to iron out...nothing major but I built in a bit too much adjustability to the worm blocks. The worm rides on skateboard wheel bearings that are the perfect fit for the shaft but I drilled slightly over size holes for the M6 bolts on the blocks so there is a tiny bit of movement i.e. more backlash than I would like. More aluminium shavings coming up!
The counterweight shaft is new too....almost forgot this one. The old shaft was a bit of plumbing with 15kg's of gym weights. It worked looked a bit ugly but had no adjustability(there is that word again) so had to go. This is a brass collar with internal threads and a couple of grub screws to hold it in place. The shaft is the extension from my NEQ6 and 3 brand new Skywatcher 5kg weights. I quite like the white though black would fit in better???
Some photos of the whole shebang.