All the OTA panels have now been cut, as too where the clamps cut out today. Hickny helped me out here with the clamps, giving me use of some very nice power tools. Ta mate,
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We also put together the mirror box. It has been reinfored with triangular brackets, should be able to jump on it now. The bottom panel holding the mirror cell is being held in place with cross-dowel connector bolts and a couple of side screws to allow access to the mirror (pic. 1). This should only be a rare occarance. I used epoxy glue to fix the cross-dowels in place to prevent them from rotating.
The second pic shows the secondary cage being cut out with the router jig I made. The jig shows the various centres measured out for the various radii. Tricky part here is to keep in mind the out-side and in-side edge of the router bit. The third pic show the finished 'cage'. The teat on the top is the continuation of the stop of the top strut. All three poles stop on the underside of the cage.
The fourth pic shows the completed clamps. The were made by joining three layers of the 15mm ply. Because of the size of the scope, for me the clamps make or break this design. Having such a long clamping surface makes for less flex. I'm looking at using very fine emery paper on their pole contact area to provide an exceptionally strong grip when engaged.
I'll paint the cage and clamps before fixing the clamps to the cage to avoid having the paint 'glueing' the moving part of the clamps to the cage. The clamps in the centre of the image are larger as they sit on the outside half of the cage and the top edge of the mirror box.