[tnott]

For those that are interested, here are a couple of photos of a primary baffle and altitude bearing reinforcements that I recently added to my scope.

You can see the steel struts reinforcing the altitude bearings across the tips - put in place with knobs. Not sure how much flexure this prevents at low altitudes as the scope was pretty stiff before - I'll have to do some on/off comparison.

The baffle around the primary blocks stray light at the bottom end and protects the mirror a bit from kicked up dirt etc. It's made out of a piece of black signboard, curved into a tube and held in place with velcro. Works well and I don't worry about the exposed primary as much.