I am very proud of myself right now.
I spent the latter half of this Sunday making my very own tube rings and mounting plate to mate my ED80 to the EQ5 I bought from Mark. This was the first time I used a router (the mechanical kind) and I failed with my first attempt, but my second one worked out well.
Here are a couple of pics of my creation with and without scope (click the thumbnails for larger pics):
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jano...-001_thumb.jpg http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jano...-003_thumb.jpg
Notes:
Ingredients:
- 20mm and 12mm exterior plywood (Home Timber & Hardware, sold by the square metre & cut to any size; never buy timber from Bunnings!) $10 with heaps left over.
- Sticky backed felt (to protect the precious OTA from being scratched by the wooden surface); felt comes in A4 sheets from Lincraft for $4 --- this stuff is nice and thin and does the job well
- small nails and/or wood screws
- wood glue
- 6mm bolts with nuts for hinges (threads only at the ends and smooth elsewhere; yet to buy washers)
- two more 6mm bolts, nuts & washers to clamp two halves of each ring together (yet to buy, temporary springy clamps are carefully hidden in the above photos
)
Gotta have power (and some other) tools for this job:
- good jigsaw (< $50) that can do angled cuts + good quality blades for straight cuts + skinny ones made for curved cuts
- router for the inner precise circular cut. I bought a Blak&dekker router for $99 just for this job; but I always wanted a router anyway just needed the excuse. I had to improvise with the B&D router because although it does circular cuts the attachments do not help with small circles (radius < 100mm).
- good quality sharp router bit ($12 from Tony's in Oakleigh VIC)
- bench drill (<$100); This is crucial for the bolted hinges. Handheld drilling will never yield a nice smoothly moving hinge. Also, ideally the size of the bolt used for the hinge should closely match the size of one available drill.
- handheld drill for predrilling holes for screws or nails even (plywood splinters easily)
- sandpaper, sanding block
- good goggles for dust and a dust mask and(/or?) vacuum attachment for jigsaw & router. I cannot emphasise this enough. I had goggles and safety glasses, and neither were adequate. I have sore dry eyes full of sawdust.
- clamps for glueing things in place before driving in nails / screws
Beyond that, the pictures should be self-explanatory...
The setup works really well. It's just as functional as a ready-made one and it's rock solid. And the ED80 loves it!
