The Tailgate

We worked on the tailgate today. We used one of the 10" x 10" pieces we cut from the sheet of plywood. Using a compass we measured and drew a 12" circle from the center of the piece of wood. This marked the lines to cut off the corners of the square so it will fit into our tube.

Next we drew a 8" circle on the wood and divided it into 6 equal parts. The helped us find the position to drill the three holes for the bolts that will be used to adjust the mirror to focus it. we painted the top of the piece and are waiting for it to dry.

We successfully cut out all the parts that will be used in the assembly of the Dobsonian 10" telescope. We ran into a slight issue after following Erica's advice to use a wide sharpie as the width of the saw blade. The sharpie's width is approx. 1/4 " and the width of a saw blade is closer 1/8". This made for some interesting recutting to remove a black sharpie line from the outside of each piece. Ah well, live and learn. As my wife said, "nothing a band saw could not have fixed."

We are going to start on the tail gate next. This is the piece that holds the mirror in the back of the scope. You can see it in the above image as the 10' x 10' square that has three holes in triangle form. This one should be interesting as we exercise some of our rusty geometry skills.

10" Dobsonian Telescope Project

Less than a month into star gazing, and I have the astronomy bug so badly, I want to do something more hands on. Michael and I were browsing the Internet and found several projects where others have made their own telescopes. Most of the projects involved making a reflector type scope, specifically the Dobsoian mount types.

After searching we found a set of plans located here: http://www.backyardvoyager.com/tenin.html

After looking them over, I was surprised to see that they were not very complex. I believe Michael actually said something along the lines of, "If those old guys a long time ago could make the scopes, so can we." Of course we will not be grinding our own mirrors, and the hardware store has quite a bit more than Newton's had.

So I bought a 12" Sona tube, a piece of 3/4" ply wood and we started. Take a look at the Project slide show to the left.