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The scope was built 44 years ago. I was a member of a telescope makers club. Cliff Duncan mentored me and suggested that diagonal size. I was 15, who was I to argue. The spider body is a brass bar with tapped holes to hold the 3 adjustment screws and a ball washer on a central thread that the whole thing rotates upon. There are two tabs solders on the brass tube to stop the mirror falling out and it's held in place by cotton wool and crumpled tissue paper.
The vanes are made of spring steel silver soldered (brazed) into thin slots cut into the brass body and brazed into the heads of brass screws to make the tensioning threads. I can't remember how thick they are and can't put a vernier on them unless I remove the whole spider. From memory, the flexibility feels like 22 gauge or thinner at a guess. Thin vanes on a small diagonal are fine but you have to untwist & straighten them after tensioning the tube nuts to minimise their cross section.
Definitely don't flush grits and rouges down sinks but it's handy to have water nearby. Dump the waste in the garden on the lawn. Mineralogically, abrasive wastes mix well with and are similar to some components of soils and are not toxic.
Joe
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