ATM Aluminization Equipment in Bay Area

["Bell, Andrew" <AMB2@pge.com>]

Hi, Fabio -- since you're local, do you know about Bob Fies in San Carlos?
He's an older guy who has an aluminizing set-up in his garage.  (He's been
doing all of the mirrors for John Dobson's Bay Area classes for years and
years.)  His e-mail address is alcoat@sirius.com - he also has a very bare
bones web site that you can find by doing a web search on "Bob Fies" and/or
"alcoat."

He's a very nice guy, with very reasonable pricing and good turn-around
time.  I handed my mirror over to him on a Friday night and he called me the
next Tuesday morning to say I could come pick it up.  [It was great not
having to worry over shipping the glass].  When I first met him, he was up
at the Chabot workshop experimenting with flexing a thin spherical mirror on
the test stand and then photographing the Ronchi patterns.

Two words of caution or some such about working with him.  The first is that
he looks after his 90 or so year old mother, who is also very nice but
doesn't hear very well.  If you call him and she answers, it's OK to ask her
to let you call back and leave a message on the answering machine!  Second
cautionary note is that Bob has a bit of what my father-in-law calls "the
shakes" (years of chemical exposure probably hasn't helped).  I've never
heard of him dropping a mirror, and am fairly certain that he'd ask for help
if he wasn't confident of himself.  But be prepared to feel just a little
bit nervous when he's handling your glass.  

-- Andrew Bell
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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:30:38 -0700
From: Fabio Pettinati <fabio@best.com>
Subject: ATM Any ATMs out there with aluminization equipment?

If someone on this mailing list has the equipment necessary to 
aluminize mirrors, please contact me off the list. I am looking for 
someone who might be interested in doing an one-of-a-kind exploration.

Fabio Pettinati
San Jose, CA
fabio@best.com