A slightly sad Tak 7x50 finder, with illuminator and bracket came up on AM recently, and for the price, I had to grab it. Then the conversion rate made it not as cheap as I wanted, but ya get that!
Anyway, as you can see, originally it was quite sad. Upon receipt, it was obvious the tube paint could NOT be saved without stripping. Shame, but I have matching Tak white paint...
So, I stripped it chemically - all of 3 minutes with MEK
I am always amazed at the Tak anodising they do to their tubes (dark blue) prior to paint, whereas the Chinese finders are merely bare aluminium which they paint over. Just quality. 3 coats of gun applied Tak white, a cure for 3 days then a rub back and polish and voila!
I removed the EP and the EP adapter ring, and screwed on a non-rotating helical focuser, and presto, one perfect guider. Note this is one of the older LONG FL Tak finders.
The rings are custom made tube-fitting rings (thin felt lining, all secured with a total of 6 grub screws - ZERO flex.). The rail cme off a telescope discarded on the side of the road that I chopped, sanded and painted, and the dovetail clamp is a Prostar, repainted white. The FSQ sits in K-Astec 114mm rings with their top and bottom plates.
This should definitely produce much better star shapes than the old converted Celestron/Synta finder, that gave elongated / oblate star shapes
