An elderly friend of mine used his World War 1 (yes, ONE) experience in heliographic signalling (you modern crackerjack electronics guys will have to look that up in the oldest encyclopaedia that you can find!) to adjust the elevation of his telescope using a sliding rod and clamp, with a turnbuckle fine adjustment (as is known to every yachtie and rigger in the world, a turnbuckle is a barrel with a right-hand thread and threaded rod in one end and a left-hand thread and threaded rod in the other -- rotate the barrel and the rods move apart or closer....). That allowed him to use bearings of effectively zero friction to give the most controllable elevation adjustment that I have ever seen or felt. Needless to say, the turnbuckle was conveniently to hand near the observer.
For the sake of completeness, I should say that his azimuth bearing was an enormous conical roller bearing that he had obtained from some engineering scrap yard, and he had rigged up a clutch involving a magnet which locked it up or released it at the twist of a stick (also conveniently to hand) connected by a universal joint. I don't know the details, and my friend is now six feet under, so don't ask me to ask him....