Eyepiece repair

[Boggy (Barry)]

Does anyone have any knowledge if an Ethos 13mm can be repaired, only needs the metal screw in part with the barlow lens at the bottom, it bent the filter thread and slightly chipped the lens, otherwise looks OK.

Rolled off the table and hit the concrete floor.

Barry

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Ouch

[rmcconachy]

Call Tele Vue (1-845-469-4551 from 9am-5pm ET USA). I'm sure they can repair it for you but the repair and shipping to the USA and back will not be cheap. Certainly less expensive than a new Ethos though!

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Hi,

This raises a good point. I dread dropping an EP since at home I am on pavers.

There must be an eyepiece guru, a glass-surgeon type of person, somewhere in Oz, whom we could consult. This would most likely be a technician that had learned all the gee-whizery in an optics lab, such as for optical, survey or microscope equipment somewhere, even ideally, a telescope maintenance tech.

Where is he/she? How to find this personage? Plaudits await. Honorary awards such as Knight of IIS (that's KIIS for short ) could be given.

Cheers

[rmcconachy]

There are local people like Roger Davis at Bintel's Melbourne store (and no doubt others, I name the one I know of who does this commercially) who can do quality optical repairs and restoration work. Unfortunately, I doubt Roger has a spare field lens for a 13mm Ethos eyepiece laying around. I don't believe that Tele Vue sell parts like lenses (I'd love to be corrected if I am wrong) but they will service their eyepieces and scopes.

[blink138 (Pat)]

hello barry i am an optical mechanic / technician of twenty five years in the opthalmic industry and i can picture the type of fracture that has occured
how far into the lens has the chip encroached?
if it is less than half to three quarters of a millimeter this could possibly be "edged out" on a smooth diamond stone and then some very fine wet and dry sand paper to clear the edge of "stars" caused by the stone
is the lens positive or negative?
pat

[Boggy (Barry)]

There is about a 1.5mm scratch on the lens about two thirds the way out from centre, probably not such a big deal . The lens looks to be convex.

The problem is the short metal housing its mounted in is badly damaged and needs replacement, no filters can be fitted. I'll probably have it sent back to TeleVue for repairs through Bintel where I bought the eyepiece. I'm informed this can be done.

After this I'll stick some fuzzy velcro to all my eyepieces, about a square cm, so they can't roll anymore.

Barry