Thread: Rotating Rings
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Old 24-07-2015, 10:16 PM
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OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: '34 South' Young Hilltops LGA, Australia
Posts: 1,469
That tape looks like good stuff. The old fashioned solution would be wood on wood finely sanded and finished in danish wax.

I built a 6 inch newt scope in the 1970's with the ATM club of Qld. The club cast all its own aluminium parts and machined them. Glass blanks and aluminium ingots went in to the foundary and finished telescopes came out the other end. My good friend and mentor the late Cliff Duncan was the powerhouse and engine room of the club. Can't praise him highly enough although if they have internet wherever he is now, he'd be reading this and saying something that I can't post here. Rotation rings Al on Al were standard equipment on all scopes.

I did a LOT of visual observing with that scope during the 1980's. I have to say, good rotation rings are the bees knees for visual work on an EQ mount. You don't even need to slacken the cradle tension strap on mine. You just find the right tension, dry lube on the bearing surfaces and leave them like that. The tube spins easily with minor force and stays where you leave it. The rings are nearly concentric to the optical axis so you don't even lose the image field when you rotate with anything longer than a 10mm eyepiece. Can't recommend them highly enough for visual work. You'd need to be careful of flex and movement for photography although most photographers using newts point the focusser parallel to the dec axis - Joe
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