ATM Born Again "First Light" (very long)

[Joe Mayenschein <mayen1@mwt.net>]

Born Again "First Light"

 Being a very avid ATM'er way back in the old days, we're talking early
70's here dudes. I had made several telescopes. All during my early high
school years. Then living in the suburbs of the Chicago area, the skies
weren't all that bad. Actually they were very good thinking of what they
are like now. One could easily see naked-eye without even trying hard
all the stars of Ursa minor, as well as many nebulas, like the lagoon,
and of course the great Orion Nebula. Bet, they can't do that now.

 Well, that old scope my first attempt of mirror making, has gone
through many transformations. And the telescope has been beat to H*ELL
and back. Most of the components were bought from University optics.
Except the spider, I wasn't happy with the university model, so I used a
Novak model for that.

 Well, the skies slowly got bad in the Chicago area, to the point you
were traveling to be able to see much. So the Hobby was suffering badly.
Then  "Amateur Radio" came along and the poor old scope really took a
back seat so to speak. Soon after that I became  married and having a
kid also kinda took up a lot of my time, as well as starting up a
business. Well in ‘77 I moved into dark skies of Wisconsin! Holy-cow!
The Stars do still exist! And the old scope came back out to be used a
lot more. So much was done with it in those days, I was into everything
from astro-photography, to just deep sky viewing, to almost anything you
could think of. And the poor old scope looked like it.

 That poor telescope had so many holes in it from guide scopes, to off
axis guiders, from finders, to, counterweights, or anything else you
could possibly hang onto a telescope it had it on it at one time or
another. The poor thing looked like a piece of Swiss cheese. (The solid
tube now has really good ventilation he he)
I've always prided myself in not only the performance of my telescope,
but in also it appearance. So something had to be done. Being way out in
the boonies, (good for astronomy, bad for parts) The only thing I could
think of was just to try to cover up the holes. But what with? I used an
old star poster, (some of you may remember an article I wrote for old
roger of S&T about it) it looked great.

 Well.  The family business kinda died during the recession of the early
80's. And I had to get a different job. And again astronomy took a very
deep back seat, like almost 15 years!

 Things have recently settled down and my life is much more secure now,
I Got on the old Internet and came across some of Mel's pages, and the
old astronomy bug bit hard again! Out came the old trusty scope. POOR
BABY! UG.!

 Sitting in a dark damp basement for 15 years can take a toll on things.
The old Edmund Scientific German Equatorial mount was a solid fuzzy
bunch of rust. The tube had mildew spots everywhere! Looking into the
tube, (it was never covered by the way or even capped, just left open
all this time) I could see the mirror. Err, well, but I could see the 6"
diameter round object at the bottom of the tube. The dust, and mildew
were so thick the mirror was no longer silver at all. Just a dull gray
with black spots. Out of the basement it came, and the wrenches were
applied, took it all apart down to the single components. First thing,
what is the condition of the mirror?

 What mirror? This disk of dust is a mirror? It was even Sticky! YUK!
Well I placed it into a sink full of warm water and ivory soap (Clausing
always said to use Ivory soap to clean Beral)and let it sit over night.
The next morning came the moment of truth. A lot of that gunk was now
floating on the surface EEEWWW! Push down the drain plug and let that
stuff drain away, (hope the EPA doesn't find out, that stuff looked like
hazardous waste to me!) But the mirror still was gray with black spots!
Yuk.  Well out to the kitchen sink and the sprayer unit!

 Man, but this gunk will not move at all! GRRR! Even straight HOT water
with the spray at full force isn't doing anything! BUMMER! Well, the
mirror is useless as it is this way, can't hurt it any more that it
already is. Out comes the FINGER! "I Touched it!"Wow, the first time
since 1972 that a human finger touched the surface of that mirror. I
must be privileged! Err, well, I touched the grimy dust at least! Well,
out comes the very soft camel's hair brush (where on the camel do they
get this incredible soft stuff from? That animal is so ugly it doesn't
look like it has a soft hair on it's body, hhhmmm, maybe I don't want to
know where on a camel's body they get this hair) Between the brush and
the full force hot water about half of the gunk is now off, but the
mirror has a long way to go. It's far from shiny, and still loads of
large black areas.

 Well, drastic messes take drastic means to clean. Ok, back to giving it
the finger method. Water running, and a finger gently dabbing, no
sideways motion, don't want to scratch the surface now. More is coming
off, but there is still a lot on there, and those black areas aren't
changing at all. Scary, be more aggressive, start rubbing, veerryy
lightly, so light can't even feel it. Well that's helping more is coming
off, and don't seem to be making any scratches. This is working pretty
well. The gunk is almost all gone, not too bad looking surface. But
those black areas are still there. And I can feel them too as I slide
from the shiny areas to the black areas, there is a definite different
feel to it, especially at the transition point where it goes from shiny
to black.  What is this stuff!?

 It won't come off! What is that stuff? Rub, Rub, Rub, RUB, RUB! And it
won't go away! HHmmm, there's a brillo pad on the edge of the sink,
hhmm, Nah., maybe not. Well after at least an hour of scrubbing, it's
time for a break. I pull the mirror out of the sink to set it on the
table to dry out and to see if I can figure out what that dark stuff is.

 Oh MAN! GeeZ! I don't believe it! $%#@!*&$%#,, it isn't something on
the mirror, it's missing the coating! The black areas when in the sink
looked black but holding it out of the sink above the white kitchen
floor, I CAN SEE THROUGH IT! Wow, am I glad I didn't try that Brillo
pad.

 Well.  The coatings surely shot. I wonder what it looks like on the
Foucault tester? EWW!
The figure is the same even after all these years but the uncoated areas
sure are a different setting. (I wish I had taken a zonal measurement of
an area with coating and one without, and see what the difference was
could have been interesting) Anyway I guess it's surely going to need to
be re-coated. First I wanted to remove the old coating. Remembering from
Clausing they said to use Hydrochloric acid to remove the coating.  Ok,
um, where can I get some. Running into dead ends here. Back to the
boonies problem. (Many of you maybe remember this part on the list
several months ago) I want to do a good check on the mirror before I
send it in to be re-coated, but can't find any acid anywhere here. Then
one day while sitting in the reading room, (strange room, kinda small,
has lots of plumbing fixtures in it.) I was reading a bottle that I
found in the room, and lo and behold, like cool man, toilet bowl cleaner
has hydrochloric acid in it! Well what the heck I'll try it. First I
tried it on the secondary mirror. If it screws anything up let, it be
that, not the primary. I put a small drop on the mirror and covered it
with some "Handi-wrap." By the next morning about ½ the coating was
gone. By the next day it was totally gone and no damage to the mirror.
Next was the primary. I did the same thing Put some on the face of the
mirror and covered it with the Handi-wrap to keep it from drying out.

 Well Beral is apparently a lot tougher than over coated aluminum. It
took almost four days to finally remove all of the old coating. (What is
"Beral" any way? Berillium and aluminum?) Well back into the tester, and
the figure was just as I remember it from sooo, long ago. Slightly under
corrected, with a slight usual turned down edge. This was my first
mirror I ever made, and had no one to ask questions of. All I had to go
by was some sort of  a 10-page booklet from EDMUND that I had. So those
of you out there complaining of getting help from this list, man!, Back
then I would have killed to have this resource! Of this list, Or even
one knowledgeable person that I would have bugged for a LLOONNGG time.
Just to show you all how little I knew about what I was doing back in
72. This mirror was supposed to be the "standard of the day" an F-8.
Oops. 60 grit ok I'm at 48" fl now, cool, start smaller grits. 80, 120,
220, 320, 400, 305 emery, pitchlap time. I ran a full hour on each grit
with mot all the time. Boy was I surprised when I set up the Foucault
tester to find out my actual focal length was now 36"! All those grits
and always MOT shortened it by 12"! Oh well, I'm happier with a f-6
anyway now that I know what I like to do in astronomy. That mirror took
me an actual two years of work! After school, on weekends, whenever I
had some spare time, I worked on that mirror. So to those complaining
about "I've been working on this for 12 hours," get a life! It's a
Hobby! You are supposed to be doing this for fun! If it isn't fun, Why
are you doing it? It surely can't be your job or you would have been
canned long time ago!

 Living in the Chicago Suburbs, of course it went to Clausing for
coating back in 72. But now I'm going to have to ship it somewhere
anyway so there's really no difference that way. So now who do I send it
to? With the help of the ATM list here, I got all the others that
provide the service, and checked them all out. Well off it goes to
Clausing anyway. Along with the secondary.

 Now, that tube and mount, Ug, got a lot of work ahead of me now! Hmm,
the mount can wait, I'll make a simple dobsonian for it. When the scope
was first built there was no such thing as a Dobsonian. Now off to the
lumber yard to get some particle board. Gonna need some "Ebony Star,"
well I'm in the boonies again. They never heard of it. I was able to dig
into their sink cutouts, and found something that looked promising. Not
sure if it was or is "Ebony Star" or not, all I know is that it does not
have a high gloss finish. Kind of  a pebbly surface. Somewhat like a
very fine orange peel type of a surface. It looked promising. Actually
it's the only thing they had.

 The Dob I started to build as a standard type, nothing special or
unusual I think. Actually nothing to go by except some of the pictures
I've been seeing on web pages. I got a fairly good idea as to how they
are making them. The elevation axis is a good example of keeping your
eyes open always looking for something that could be made into a
telescope part. I was driving home one day and was detoured from my
normal drive home. Some water/sewer lines had broke or collapsed or
something, don't know, don't care, was mad at the traffic jam, ROAD
RAGE! He he, I finally made it up to where they were digging, and saw
this huge hole with lots of pieces of busted pipe laying around   I need
some tubing for the elevation bearing, hhmm, they are a bit large for a
6" dob, they are 8" o.d., but what the heck the price is right, maybe. I
asked one of the construction guys if I could have a short piece, like a
foot long or so. He said sure, take all ya want. So I got my elevation
bearings now. Cool.  The rest of the mount was made in the usual
fashion.

 Now for that tube, What a mess! Holes everywhere, mold & mildew on
everything. And holes!,, lots of empty holes.  What to do? Most of the
holes were small ones 1/4 to a ~  inch in size. But there was this one
BIG HONKER! It was the leftover from a homemade off axis guider focuser
that I had in it at one time. Here was a hole that was 3" in diameter.
Geez! This was a problem that I thought about for a while. BONDO? Nah,
That would make it look like an old camaro then all bumpy and wrinkly.
This was gonna stump me for quite a while it seemed.

 Till one day at work, a piece of machinery had busted a joint, and I
was taking it back to the maintenance dept. to see what they could do
with it. Thinking "this thing is shot, it's made of aluminum, ya can't
weld aluminum." Little did I know, a lot of things changed since I took
welding in shop in high school way back in those stone age days of the
early 70's. You now can weld aluminum!  COOL. After the guy welded the
piece of machinery I asked him if he could fill some holes in the tube I
had, he said "sure, bring it in next Saturday and I'll fill them all in
for ya." We filled em in ok, all 28 of them! And he even put a thin
plate behind the 3" hole and welded it in. A little grinding, a small
amount of "Bondo" for the tiny dents and the tube is as smooth as  new.

 A couple coats of primer, and it's ready to be rebuilt into a
telescope. Now just the wait for the mirrors to come back. Wow! That was
FAST! My mirror is back, and it only was six days from the time it left
my house! My hats off to the Clausing gang! Well parts go back in. Hey
cool! No parts left over! (Couldn't resist that. I love that old NAPA
commercial)

 Well all is collimated and ready to go.  A first look around the
scenery at the local trees and far away hills etc. looks promising!, But
the new dob mount I'm not too happy with. The elevation axis is great.
But the azimuth is sticky. It seems to take a lot of pressure to get it
to start to move. Then "Snap" a smooth sliding motion. But that first
initial to get it to move is not good.
Must be in my materials. No way could I use it this way under medium or
high power.

 I made a small mod, or maybe not, don't remember if it was stated in
John's original design or not. Or if I saw it on some other page and
just don't remember seeing it anyplace. So I don't take any credit for
this mod. I didn't have any TEFLON. I did have some UHMW stuff that
seemed to be very slippery. Once it was moving, even very slowly it
moved smmootthhllyy. But it tended to have a tough time breaking free. I
thought maybe the UHMW was deforming and matching the texture of that
orange peel surface. Causing it to lockup in the pattern of the texture.
So I thought I'd try something I thought of, (don't know if it's new
idea, or if it's been done before) but I placed on the pivot bolt a
thrust bearing, and shimmed it up to the point that it was providing at
least 90% of the vertical load. All the UHMW pads were doing was provide
stability.

 This seemed to help immensely.  The amount of stickiness I was getting.
But there was still some. Thought maybe it's the UHMW stuff. Need to
find some TEFLON.. Darn Boonies, can't find anything. Found some TEFLON
tape for sealing pipes, hhmm, ah what the heck, stuffs cheap why not try
it. The UHMW was thick stuff about 1/4" thick, so I had mounted it with
plain, old 1/4-20 counter sunk bolts. So it was a simple test to just
remove them, totally wrap them in the TEFLON tape and reinstall them. IT
WORKED! Perfect smooth buttery feeling. No break free at all. Even at
300X a slight pressure and it begins to move along. Cool! Now to wait
for nightfall and "First Light of the second coming"

 It's getting dark.  Jupiter and Saturn are bright in the southwest very
low on the horizon. Not a good test to be fair to the scope, but I
haven't seen these old pals for 15 years. Saturn was in it glory, a bit
small, but thinking it's twice as far away as it is when you would
usually see it. It still was fun to look at. Even as many hubble
pictures you see, there is something about catching those photons with
your own eye. Don't know what it is. But it is almost spiritual. Then
there's JUPITER, Yup all four moons wandering, that little mini solar
system all it's own. I could see several bands on the planet. This is
sooo cool!

 Ok.  It's darker now, time to do some serious work here. I decided to
try something that I never had before. (Maybe because they didn't exist
back in 72?) I bought and installed a "Telrad" finder. Looks like a good
idea. I'm not too sure how useful it will be with zero power, and no
light grasp. But it's still better than trying to sight along the tube
to line it up on something in the sky. Especially when this dob is near
the zenith. Then there would be no-way to sight along the tube. Unless
you can stick your head in the ground.

 Ok, lets do a few things here while were waiting for it to get dark.
Lets align the telrad.
Polaris, ah ok centered in the eyepiece,, look into the telrad,, hhmm,,
nothing,, hmm, I see Polaris,, but no rings.  Geez,, stupid,, turn it
on!! It is electrical ya know.  Hmm, Still nothing, what a piece of
junk!,, oops duh! Put in the batteries,, "click" ah cool, rings. Hey
this is very cool. Double check POLARIS.. Re-center in the eyepiece,
look in telrad, a few knob twists and perfectly lined up! Now lets test
it. Hhmm, what to find, ah easy target Sirius!  Centered in telrad, look
in eyepiece. Like cool it's in there. Next the Orion nebula,, centered
on it in the telrad. Look in eyepiece,, this is kickass! It's there,,
run in to get wife to show her,, BIG DUH!! Ruin dark adaptation, could
have just yelled for her to come out. DUH! Oh well while waiting for
eyes to get good agin spent some time showing wife planets. And ORION
Nebula.

 Ok, wife's back in the house and eyes are as good as they are going to
get. It's as dark as it's going to get. Lets put this telrad to the real
test! I'm going for some objects I never saw before! I got a book,
because I wanted to at least see all the messier objects before I die. I
have had all my life perfect vision, but in the last two or three years
they are a failing now.  So I bought "The Year Round Messier Marathon"
by Howard Pennington.  It's a cool book in my opinion. Ok, What to look
for,, ah,, heres something I have never seen yet,, as easy as it looks
like it should be a snap to find, I can honestly say I have never seen
the "Owl Nebula" M97. Well I looked at the chart with the telrad circles
on it,, made the view in my telrad look the same, and nervously looked
into the eyepiece. OOHH BOY!! Right dab in the middle there it is!! I
can't believe it!!It's bright too! Why couldn't I ever see this before!?
I must have gazed at that little ghostly circle for an hour! I looked in
the book again and noticed M108 is nearby, just a nudge in,, this,,
direction,,, should,, do,, it,, whoa, there it is.. Like cool!! I must
have bopped back and forth between these little things for a while.  Ok.
Now for a thing that I also never saw but always wanted to. M51 the
whirlpool galaxy.

 Back to the book, chart, telrad, chart, telrad, book, (this one isn't
as easy) but I think I got it where it is supposed to be.. Ok, Joe Look
in the eyepiece,, see anything? HOLY COW!! THERE IT IS!! AS PLAIN AS
DAY!! Well this is incredible!

 The rest of the evening went much about the same. My wife probably
thought I was losing my mind from the periodic WHOA YEAH!! THERE IT IS!!
As well as any neighbors.

 Well as all First Light nights have to end, this one had to end way too
early for me. Clouds invaded my night time sky and spoiled my excitement
for the night. I reluctantly brought the scope back in for the night and
went to bed.

 Ok, Morning after First Light. Basking in the afterglow (no I don't
smoke) Thinking how well the scope performed. What can I do to make it a
bit more versatile?  Remembering the time, I had with M51. (Faint stars
to go by) I loved the way the telrad worked. But the fact of no light
grasp kinda sucks at times I guess. I can't even ponder thinking of the
VIRGO cluster with it as is. I was reading about the telrad and how it
works. I was amazed on how simple it really was yet so functional. Part
that confused me was when it states that the circles are projected at
infinity. I thought to myself.  This is strange. I can see them
perfectly placed on the nighttime sky as if they were drawn there. And
it's always in focus whether I'm 3 feet away from it or just a couple of
inches. I thought to myself.  This is really strange. But it works
great.

 Hhmm,, if they are at infinity,, then even a finder should be able to
look through it and also see the rings superimposed on the sky. I had an
old pair of Binoculars that I bought at a garage sale for 50 cents a few
years ago. They were pretty well messes up. Alignment was so far off
that when something was centered in one, in the other it was at the very
edge of the field of view. Really bad to say the least. Well I took then
and tried them as is, kinda got in the right position behind the scope,
floored the telrad (it was daytime) and tried to see if I could actually
look through the binoculars and have the telrad rings superimposed in
the field of view, and be in focus and all.  Well it worked!! Like cool,
Ok, now I needed a way to make this into a finder. I gutted the optics.
Well I  took the objective cell off and the eyepiece, if you want to
call that gutting. Anyway, a quick trip to the local hardware store, and
a visit to the plumbing section, I came out with all the fittings needed
to make a new finder scope out of that old dead binoc. I realized
quickly that this would be a neck breaker and a diagonal of some kind
was surely going to be needed.

 A short note to the list here stating what I was doing, and asked if
anyone had a Junker diagonal mirror that they didn't  need anymore. Ken
Hunter to the rescue!  Not only did he have one he said if I would send
a padded SASE to him I could just have it!! The next morning off went
the envelope!  When it came back, BOY WAS I SURPRISED!!! No, Ken didn't
send me a mirror, but a whole complete "Star Diagonal" from a Japanese
import. Locking screw and all!! This is going to be perfect!! The end
that normally you would put the .965 eyepiece into, fit perfectly onto
the last fitting of the fittings from the Tube assembly I made for that
objective. The eyepiece fit nicely over the other end. It was as if it
was made for it. This worked out better than I ever hoped it would. With
the old eyepiece end fitting over the tube assembly, it allows a quick
and dirty way to get perfect focus. This is way too easy.  Something has
to go wrong. But it never did. Cool part is the rings are just the right
size in the finder. If you look into the homemade finder, you see the
sky with the rings on it. The outer ring is at about the 70 to 80% zone
of the field of view. Couldn't ask for anything better. I positioned the
telrad of course at the upper end of the telescope tube, and the new
finder near the bottom of the tube. (About 25" away) This works cool.
You can place your head in-between, the telrad and the finder and use
the telrad as intended, or if you want a bit more light grasp once you
have the telrad close to where you want it to be I switch to the optical
finder, I see basically the same view rings and all, but just with a lot
more stars. Cool.

 Well, the scope is now mechanically and optically as close to what I
want it to be and as it needs to be. Now it needs a cosmetic fix up! The
tube is still primer gray, and the particle board DOB mount os still the
single coat of sealer. YUK! I always try to make my scopes not only
provide great views of the sky, but also be great to look at when their
sitting in my living room, or out in a campsite waiting for the sun to
go down. At first I thought of the old original classic White scope. But
on a DOB mount, well, that just doesn't look right. I thought of the
poster route again, but didn't have any handy at the time. Then where I
work we just started using some incredible materials.

 It is just like  Monocoat(tm) or Econocoat,(tm) For those of you that
don't know I'll describe what those are. Mainly in the model airplane
radio control hobby, almost no one paints their planes anymore. They use
this extremely thin polyester film that is colored. You can buy it in
all sorts of colors. It is very tough and very thin (0.002") it has a
heat activated adhesive applied to its back surface. So when you place
it where you want it to be, and using a special application iron, it
melts the adhesive and makes it very sticky. Once you remove the heat
and the adhesive cools, the stuff it stuck there forever! Really cool.

 Well.  This stuff goes one step further. IT is also metallic! So I
could apply it to my scope and make it look like the whole thing was
chromed!  What a classic huh? But then we got some even more fantastic
stuff. It is the basic metallic substrate, but it has been laser etched.
You know the rainbow effect you can see from a CD? It's the similar
effect except done on purpose so it is much more intense! Then they took
the idea one more step again. They etched designs into the spectrum
causing grating. It is unbelievable! I used what they call "Stars" on my
whole scope. You'd have to see it to believe it. Words or pictures,
can't or wont do it justice. It is soo, cool.

 You can see some pictures of my scope at where I set up a page for the
coverings. It's at.

http://members.tripod.com/Near_Space_Sciences/coverings.html

 Well I'll get off my soapbox now, and reduce the bandwidth usage
greatly he he. But I thought you dudes would like to hear a story about
an old scope that rose from the ashes,,, err,,, well the mildew anyway!

Joe Mayenschein
mayen1@mwt.net

_____________________________________________________
Joe Mayenschein
Near Space Sciences
Laser Etched Coverings
http://members.tripod.com/Near_Space_Sciences/coverings.html