Re: [ATM] Bob May's refractor

["Bob May" <rmay@nethere.com>]

It's not much, just a F8 scope made from SF12 and BK7 glasses in
a Fraunhoffer configuration with a spcing between the two
glasses.
The thing is that I wanted to build a nice tube for the glass but
there's one thing that I couldn't get over, the largest lathe
that I have is a 6" lathe and that will, in no way, cut anything
larger than that size!  Since the glass is 6.2555" in diameter,
that means that I've had to go to that good ol'  standby.  the
good ol' woodshop stuff.  Cut some rings on the router for the
lens cell and put them together, making a fairly decent cell out
of some plywood from a pallet, then decided that since I was
already using pallet wood, might as well continue so I ended up
taking some palllets made from some fruitwood, ripped them a bit
and made a bunch of four foot strips which ended up making a tube
with twenty of them.  The back end is some more of the pallet
fruitwood with a Meade  two inch focuser on the end.
Actual focal length is 050" for the scope and managed to get that
looking at the hills about three miles from my place, cut the
tube to the exact length I desired and then started in on some
baffles.  More pallet wood hit the focuser and I ended up with
three baffles of five, four and three inches, not trying to do
any particular theory on proper baffleing but just throwing some
in there for the rigidity of it.
I have a small telescope tripod with German Equatorial head and
ended making up an adapter from a piece of aluminum from
somewhere that ended up having a curve that almost matches the
wood tube on one side and  wiith a dovetail setup on the other
side.  Two blocks of hwite oak (from, yes, another pallet!)
inside the tube and the plate was mounted to the tube which left
doing dovetails for the other chunck of white oak.  Would you
believe that woodworking doesn't do 30 Deg/ dpvetao;s?  Yep, the
biggest angele that they do is two degrees less.  That meant that
I had to setup the table saw to the required angle and then cut
them on the saw.  Did a nice job and, with some lead-in at one
end, the wood slides on easily to the dovetails of the al plate.
Things that still need to be done are gluing in the baffles and
painting the outside.
Needless to say, I do love pallet wood!
Bob May
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