George's Telescope... Finished!

[David DeCristoforo]

I never owned a motorized one either, back when we were building telescopes, when I was a teenager in the '60's. We ground the optics, and everything else was just thrown together. My first one was a 4-1/4" f/15, and was just mounted on a 2x6 with the optic mounts hanging off the side. That one was not much good for anything but looking at the Moon, and was reground into a 4-1/4" f/4.

I have some Kodachrome slides I took, for exposures of like 20 minutes, using a handwheel on a flexible shaft, with the little 4-1/4", and an eye on the finder scope crosshairs following a star.

My friends, one that built telescopes with me when we were teenagers, are lead scientists on the James Webb (I sent them a link to your build). I ate dinner with a group of Astronomers, including these friends of mine, and some of the people who I had never met before asked me who I was. I said that I used to build telescopes with my friend when we were teenagers. He said, "Yeah, he still is".

My original intent was to make a simple Dobsonian base. But then I got the idea to make the GEM mount and suddenly things got complicated! Motorizing the mount was never in the plan but I thought I should build it in a manner that would allow for a retrofit at some point. I will never do this myself but future owners might want to. I have gone so far as to play with a design for a worm gear and stepper motor arrangement that would hide inside the shaft tubes. There just might be enough room inside the 6" diameter shaft tubes to make this work. But that's going to be a project for someone in the future!

[John K Jordan]

I just thought of something - do you plan to add these pictures to the "combined thread"? Or should this thread be appended to that at some point?

JKJ

[David DeCristoforo]

I just thought of something - do you plan to add these pictures to the "combined thread"? Or should this thread be appended to that at some point?

JKJ

Oops! In my excitement over having it finished, I totally forgot about that! Should I just add to that thread or do you want to move this one! Either way is fine.

[John K Jordan]

Oops! In my excitement over having it finished, I totally forgot about that! Should I just add to that thread or do you want to move this one! Either way is fine.

Either way. Adding to the other simplifies things and makes it easier to follow. Combining threads brings in the conversation about bearings, motor drives and such.

If you had a bunch of extra time a new thread with just the pictures and your comments would be a beautifully concise thing to read, showing the linear progression and preserving the impact of your accomplishment, sort of a blog. Could include drawings, shots you working on it in the shop (if you have those), comments on problems solved, tradoffs, etc. But..., that would be... pretty much an article! Did I mention I thought this would make a good mag article?

JKJ

[David DeCristoforo]

I tried to PM you to ask if you could append this to the combined thread but for some reason I was not able to get it to work. So I just added the post to the combined thread. That way everything will be in the same place.

[John K Jordan]

I tried to PM you to ask if you could append this to the combined thread but for some reason I was not able to get it to work. So I just added the post to the combined thread. That way everything will be in the same place.

I think the forum has been changed to limit private messaging to contributing members, a minimum of $6 per year to help keep the doors open!

JKJ