|
Some more progess.
After procrastination I have glued the Ebony Star to the bottom of the rocker box. Contact cement is no fun to work with but it worked out fine in the end. As the piece of laminate I had was slightly larger than the width of the box by about 40mm, I had to work out a way to trim it. Found a cheap set of router bits at the hardware store that cost about $30 and included a laminate trimming bit. Worked like a dream, really neat job.
Also popped laminate on the alt trunions. That was a little trickier as the laminate was 3/4" with the trunions are 18mm so they are 1mm narrower than the laminate strips. With contact cement there is very little margin for error so I didn't let the glue dry completely, just left it to partially set for 10mins then put the laminate on. I could then adjust it. The problem was that I needed to clamp it, which is obviously not possible with a round disc. So I just grabbed an old occy strap and wrapped that around to hold laminate in place.
I have also cut out part of the base of the rocker box and the front board of the box to reduce weight. Jigsaw made easy work of the laminate surface and finish was nice and clean.
I then rebuilt the rocker box as I was not happy with how square it was then reassembled the entire scope.
Did some observing with it tonight and all working well. Ebony star worked a treat. I was able to use not just the 15mm superview but also my 10, 13 and 17 Ethoi, which I really pleased about. The 21 Ethos and 41 Pan were just too heavy however.
Next jobs
1 Finalise the packing system
2. Final sand and varnish of the rocker box and ground board
3. Glue the teflon pads in place.
4. Decide on paint colour. I was orginally going to just use clear polyurethane varnish all over, but I am considering painting the rocker black to reduce light bounce onto the primary
5. Decide if it needs dew protection or not and if so how
6. Decide if I want to install encoder etc for Argo. I have a set of 4096 encoders that should be OK for a short focal length scope like this
Malcolm
Last edited by barx1963; 26-06-2013 at 06:51 PM.
|