[Hedworx (Luke)]

I am turning my skywatcher 12" f5 dobsonian into an imaging newtonain.

My primary goal for this particular scope will be as a long range planetary weapon. With my ASI183gt and a televue 4X powermate I hope to get it ready for next planet season. I have done some planetary and lunar imaging with this on the skywatcher base but the results were sub-optimal as the 15 yr old mount just wasn't up to the task.

I now have a TTS Panther 160 alt-az mount which performs very well. With the addition of the rotator atop I can now achieve sensational results which I was unable to get in the skywatcher dob base. The TTS mount head capacity is 20 kgs which means I need to trim some weight off the OTA. The heavy collapsible stock tube is far too cumbersome for the mount.... enter carbon fibre rebuild.

I had made a carbon tube previously for this scope purely for aesthetics but in the collapsible hardware still, for an imaging newt a full tube is in order. I had a piece of signwhite metal rolled to the correct diameter and made a mandrel to which I can wrap my carbon.

To prevent the epoxy sticking to the mandrel I wrapped it in plastic tape, a test with some epoxy initially came out positive with no sticking.

Two layers of 600gsm carbon were applied with West Systems epoxy with a wet layup application. To compress the carbon I then wrapped the whole lot tightly with more of the same tape. The tape wrap applied uneven pressure so I pulled it off and wrapped the whole lot in peel-ply instead.