I found an indispensable source of great knowledge at the ATM Archives site. Shortly after I began my poplar octagon upper cage I figured a telescope making book would be helpful.
Everything was progressing nicely until I got to the part about calculating the balance point. The way I saw it was I would have to add about 10 lbs. of dead weight to the mirror box just to counter the top-heavy upper cage. Bad news but not too bad... I thought.
The rest of the scope went together without incident. My Dad welded the tailgate and made the elusive 5/16-fine-thread-all-the-way-to-the-head collimation bolts by simply welding a nut and washer on some threaded rod. We also used and abused a friend's drill press for about 2 hours straight, drilling the tailgate bolt holes and maple split blocks for the truss tubes.
I got real bored real quick with the solid half circle ho-hum altitude bearings. So after about 4
hours of router work we have super cool, no more cheesy altitude bearings! On a side note, ROUTERS ARE COOL! If you're going to build a telescope get one, you will need one! The rocker box went together nicely, angles and arcs were not a problem thanks to my father-in-law Dr. Bollinger the Calculus Professor. Simple ground board with hockey puck feet. The altitude bearings and rocker box bottom are faced with Ebony Star laminate. When the laminate slides across the Teflon "magic sliders" on the rocker box arcs and ground board, it provides smooth as glass motion.
