Not everyone will like this idea, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm strapping an eyepice onto a finderscope.
Reason for doing it? The standard eyepice supplied with the finderscope is small and boring. A half decent eyepice will look cool (important) , work better for my old eyes and make a nice travel scope (and its cloudy in QLD for the next week...). See picture 1 for a comparison of the replacement (big) eyepice with the standard eyepice and you'll be satisfied with the reason.
Ingredients:
GSO 50x8 finderscope (sold as York Optical brand),
GSO 20mm superview wide angle (sold as York Optical brand),
Hacksaw, file,
Glue (of some sort that will bond metals).
How did i do it?
I removed the locking ring from the front of the finderscope and put everything back together again because you need to wind the lens "in" closer to the replacement eyepice. The replacement eyepice "sticks out" out more (in this design) then the crappy eyepice and the locking ring restricts the amount of movement.
Diagram 2 shows that you can "shorten" the eyepice by removing the silver part (technical term) of the eyepiece and get it closer to the front lens.
I removed the back plate that holds the eyepice so that I can "shorten" it by about five millimeters with a hacksaw. Once again, trying to get the eyepice closer to the lens. Diagram 3 shows the back plate after it had been cut and put back onto the scope. Filed it smooth.
Glue the eyepice to the back plate and enjoy. The end.
The results so far look great but I cant say more because the clouds are spoiling all my fun. The moon looks great in between the clounds ditto a few starts. Picute 4 shows the final product.
Godd work Markus. The next potential use for the 'modified' finderscope is as a guidescope. I cut about 20mm off the optical tube on one of these generic 8 x 50's (crude job using an angle grinder for absolote precision); removed the retaining ring on the objective before screwing it all together again; and then I turned down a bit of teflon I had into a simple eyepiece slider that slotted into the end of the optical tube and is held there by a couple of little self tappers. The other end accepts a 1.25 inch eyepiece (with a locking screw) or a web-cam. In my case I have used a Philips ToUCam 900 that now gives me a very adequate prime forcus guidescope that PHD and Guide Dog both recognise. Beats the hell out of spending a bucketload of good dollars on a bought one; more money to spend on other toys. Always a plus.
[quote=markus.a.bergh;420813]Finderscope + Eyepice = Recycled small scope
Thanks for that Markus and well done,
I think that quite a few would "like this idea".
"Reason for doing it? The standard eyepice supplied with the finderscope is small and boring" and also it scratches the coating and lense of my eye glasses and their replacement cost is about $500.00 for the lenses only.
Please let us know when you get a chance about the magnification and the field of view of your improved finder.
YES! I also wear glasses and that was one of the reasons why I did this. Why scratch very expensive glasses with a $50 finderscope? I didnt mention it on my post for fear of sounding paranoid ( about my glasses ) but I cant understant why this is not more of a concern for other people (who wear classes).
The field of fiew is significantly wider. I'm not going to to try to express the VOW scientificly. The edges are blured but this is very acceptable because now I have a findersocpe that doesn't scratch my glasses, offers more eye releif, has a wider field of view - making it easier to position my Dob and just generaly is more "comftable"/fun to use. Im sure that different eyepices would yeild different results. QLD is couldy for a wile ... , so this is all I can say. More finderscopes should be like this. Have a nice night, Markus.
