CF Tubing for Homebuilds.

[Waxing_Gibbous (Peter)]

A friend of mine is a composites engineer, who is busy assembling all the equipment needed to build CF tubes in various diameters. He's roped me in to do the donkey work and has "borrowed" half of my shed as the fabricatory.
Is there any interest out there for new or replacement CF tubes for Newts or dobs?

We sort of want to know before we go ordering parts or building various mandrels and such. We hope to be up & running in around 3 months.
He reckons we could sell 8"+ tubes for about half or less what Publicmissiles sells them for - around $3-500 depending on size and specs.
If you are interested or have any useful suggestions, please email me at: pjh4044@bigpond.com

Thanks,
Peter

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Interested, but no firm commitments at this stage.
Geoff

[Waxing_Gibbous (Peter)]

Thanks to all 7 of you who replied!!!
We've done a bit more digging and it seems there just isn't a market out there big enough to make ordering the large tube equipment even remotely feasible.
The equipment, even used, is quite expensive (though the CF is cheap) and we can't really afford to proceed.
However: all is not lost.There's a chap in Germany who has started up much the same thing. His name is Klaus Helmericks and his website is: http://www.klaushelmi.de
Nice looking stuff and he reckons he can do a 300/1200 fully finished tube POSTED for around 450 Euro.
For those who were kind enough to express interest - my apologies, and thanks again.
Peter

[casstony]

On a side note, the skywatcher catalogue that's floating around has carbon fibre f/4 newts up to 12" aperture aimed at photography; if and when those are released it would be harder to sell retrofit carbon fibre ota's.

[Tandum (Robin)]

I've had quotes from this mob in china for a 300x1200mm tube. About US$430 for the tube, US$220 shipping plus US$400 odd for the mould. Too much for a one off.

[gbeal]

Me too, with the same conclusion. In the end I did it myself, not perfect but it works OK.
Might try a smaller one again sometime, quite a bit of fun.
Gary

[Logieberra (Logan)]

Further on this post, dealing with Klaus at the moment for a tube. Highly recommended. Logie.