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And half of my cheapskate m44-T2 adapter for the Telementor

Quicker than expected a weird thread die 

2 hours ago, Bill S said:

As you (and others) say M13 is an object to looked at, studied and thought about.

Even with a smaller scope (8”) from a London sky M13 is a favourite- appearing like a neb at first sight but the more you look the more the individual stars pop out. One to spend some time on and savour 

Thanks @Stu, I bought a Baader low profile 1.25” T2 adapter a little while back for this lens and a diagonal.

it proved to be not much cop for visual- a lot of CA and it wouldn’t reach focus with the diagonal so I plan to use them with this scope. I baullked at the price of the Baader m44 to T2 adapter 😳 so have ordered a sh Miranda to female T2 and a cheap Chinese T2-T2 male adapter which hopefully will do the same job. Won’t be here for a while though so my neck and back are getting a lot of extreme stretching!

16 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

Does look a nice scope now you've recovered the lens, paint's not bad on it either, just the EP's and mount needs sorting. I'm part way through restoring one on the TAL reflectors, full repaint, hopefully it'll look good once done, spent more on paint than for the scope!

If I had a second time round  I’d become a paint manufacturer or a trbologist- have you seen the price of watch oil! 😉

Its a bit scruffy tbh but not too far gone- perfect for me so I’ll not be improving it’s appearance beyond functional stuff. Me and new things don’t really mix- that first scratch or chip is too heartbreaking. I’m more into wabi-sabi, far less stressful. You should see my car 😂

23 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

best to get a proper wrench for the purpose than risking force with 2 screwdrivers if just fingernails won't shift it. Not expensive and very useful to have if you are doing much with optics and other ring nuts like this one  

Yes I was admiring that tool in your Tal-M thread- where did you get it Dave? Looks very useful

23 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

But first now its sunny, see if I can figure that black thread insert. Given the excellent engineering that went into making these I was figuring perhaps a 3mm grub screw down that threaded hole and the insert screws in and is locked in place.

Nope  Must be a way but I sure can't see it, the hole is rough at the bottom and stops short of the black insert, solder? Oh well, on with plan-A then.

Isn’t that just the screw boss for attaching the cover Dave? Looks like that insert is either cast in place or a press fit? 

Tal stuff was really nicely engineered wasn’t it- particularly given their cost back then.  Might have to keep an eye open for one of these quirky little scopes now you’ve shown us what’s inside 😉 love that finder/focuser ingenuity 😍

4 hours ago, estwing said:

Serviced mine few years back as I've had it since leaving school..35 years😱....just could not get get the lens out, cement is so strong I feared I was going to damage something. Great scope that punches above its weight. Well done on keeping it going.

 

 

Which cement @estwing? On the retaining ring? Mine had a tiny little dab of varnish to lock it but it span out really easily.

Thanks Stu- one less thing to buy 👍 and thanks for the safety tip too!

Hi there, just wondering if you find having a 45deg diagonal beneficial in addition to a 90deg one when viewing through a frac? I imagine I could just rotate the 90deg one to get comfortable? I have come to realise a diagonal is pretty much essential either way!

Lastly today,  I serviced the focusing which was quite stiff as seems to be common.

the focuser is a kind of friction drive Crayfordish design with a tapered hardened steel wheel pressed into a steel U channel mounted in the top of the inner tube.

The inner tube is supported by 2 sets of ptfe pads inside the outer tube. At the front there are 2 fixed lower pads and a spring loaded third pad.

At the focuser end there’s just the 2 fixed lower pads and the wheel makes the third point of contact.

The focus wheel is pressed into contact by 2 spring plates acting directly on the focuser shaft either side of the wheel. 2 grub screws allow for adjusting the contact pressure.

firstly I cleaned everything

I cleaned the PTFE pads with a lighter fluid soaked pad of tissue paper taped to a long screwdriver- can't fit my hand inside the tube. You can remove the PTFE pads undoing the screws from the outside of the tube but it'd be tricky to replace them

I did contemplate waxing the outside of the inner tube but it's actually quite smooth and low friction with the PTFE so I just gave it a clean with lighter fluid.

Then I made things worse. Much worse!

I figured for better friction the wheel/U channel should run dry. Big mistake! The result was a nasty graunchy stiff focus that you could feel wouldn’t last very long! This might be of interest to you @Stu if you didn’t know it already- the U channel must be lubricated.

I used some nice sticky blue Mobil grease I had. It stays where you put it and doesn’t separate to oil and soap like regular lithium grease. It pongs a bit though 😉

grease everywhere and now the focus is nice and smooth- not moonlite or feathertouch smooth, but very useable.

Oh I forgot, been looking at the moon and Venus this evening and it still works! 

It does seem better- there’s still purple haze around Venus but less I think and the image is nice and sharp. Probably atmospherics as it was getting quite low but I almost thought I could make out some detail on it! Moon is lovely and rich and contrasty- much less noticeable purple fringing on the limb and nice crisp detail. Couldn’t make out any of Plato’s craterlets but the 6mm is my highest power at 140x. Even the big beast could only see 3 or maybe 4 at more than double that power. 

These fracs aren’t very comfortable to look through though are they?! 😉 need to sort out a 1.25” fitting so I can use my diagonal

7 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

might be worth giving the tube and various bits a wipe over with peroxide to cull any spores so the dreaded fungus doesn't creep back to spoil the party when you get to doing deeper resto works

I’ll think about that thanks Dave- doesn’t peroxide react with aluminium though?

While I had the inner OTA removed, I took the opportunity to smarten up the “dew shield” part of the outer tube- slight corrosion had left it looking a bit sad. Light wire wooling  to  get rid of the loose stuff

masked of the outside and stuffed a ball of tissue inside to stop the paint going too far

nice and black again- I used high temp exhaust paint which is quite matt though I really should invest in some of that super black stuff for jobs like this

2 minutes ago, John said:

Well done !

I didn't realise that the Telementor used a cemented doublet. Easier than messing around with 2 elements, spacers etc !

 

The 2's did John- I think earlier ones were air spaced and some say better for it. But yea then there would be a lot more surfaces to clean!

I did something stupid

I bought a Telementor 2 sight unseen and when it arrived discovered it had several issues- some mechanical and some optical. In this thread I’ll be trying to restore it to good useable condition.

Firstly the objective. This was in a sorry state when the scope arrived. A layer of baked on dust covered the front surface. I carefully swabbed this off with isopropanol and lint free cloths disposing of them regularly to avoid scratches. This revealed the rear surface was also in a bit of a state so I removed the lens cell and attempted to swab that clean in the same way. It came mostly clean but there was left a circular patch that just wouldn’t shift with this gentle cleaning.

The patch would catch light from the side and as reported in another thread seemed to be diffusing the incoming light causing a lot of glare/flare whatever it’s called around bright subjects. My thought was it was some sort of fungal etching of the glass surface which doomed the scope to the scrap heap. It certainly looked like that through a loupe.

I’d arranged with the seller to return it for a refund but the views through it of the moon were still pretty great despite the flare and I’ve grown attached to this thing the few days I’ve had it... So today I threw caution to the wind and did something pretty foolhardy.

Unscrewing the 2 screws on the focuser to remove it 

The inner OTA proper can now be removed- tip the assembly until it slides forward then turn the inner tube 90deg to clear the inner guide pads and extract. Note the 3 baffles inserted into slots in the tube.

The lens cell simply unscrews from the OTA.

Using just thumb nails in the slots in the retaining ring, unscrew it and remove it and the spring loaded clamping ring. Invert the cell to remove the objective.

I used lots of running water, fairy  liquid, isopropanol and a final rinse of distilled water with very gentle finger dabbing to clean both surfaces

After drying a few streaks still remained- the distilled water obviously wasn't perfect

An hour or so using lens tissues to carefully wipe off breath condensate and finally things looked much better

DB673276-B135-4DDF-AAD1-AAE551C9F27F.MOV

Back in the cell- there was a pencil line on the edge of the glass to mark orientation- and holding it up to the light the circle of diffusion has gone. It’s not 100% perfect- can still see very faint marks on both surfaces with a loupe but it’s much much better. Will try it tonight if there’s the opportunity and see how much improved it really is.

This was a pretty stupid thing to do but I’m glad I did it. I could have dropped it and ended up with an expensive pile of junk.

I don’t think I put a scratch on it though so it worked out for the good. I’m keeping the scope 😉

21 hours ago, Dave1 said:

That is a shame to read you are having these issues. If I were you, I would probably send it back for a full refund. Another option if you are not comfortable sorting the lenses , is to send it to be professionally cleaned. Ask for a quote from the telescope specialist and then ask the previous owner to pay the bill. Or get the previous owner to atleast pay the quoted price up front, and then if there is any difference between quoted and final prices, to settle the final bill.

David

I had a another look at the moon last night - couldn’t resist. Despite the flare there’s just something very nice about it’s rendering- a Kodachrome like richness of contrast. 🤦‍♂️So now I’m seesawing again lol. Has anyone ever had their objective professionally cleaned by an optician? Got a ball park idea of what it’s likely to cost? Can’t imagine it’d be that expensive?

Thanks everyone for the input. It’s going back and I shall look for another. All good. The die means I’ll be ready to make replacements for the almost inevitably stripped slo-mo inserts when I do get one 😉

Well not really a dilemma as I’ve pretty much decided... but interested in others opinions of what you’d do @Stu @L8-Nite and other owners 

Yesterday I posted in the what did the postman bring thread my newly acquired Telementor which I was very excited about. When it arrived my heart sank straight away as all the optics were caked in decades old dust and there were several mechanical issues in the mount- a broken spring housing and stripped threads in both slomo controls (very common problem I hear) I convinced myself I could fix the mechanical issues even ordering an M11x0.75 dies for the threaded parts...

But on cleaning the objective and eyepieces things looked worse. The eyepiece bodies showed corrosion and paint loss from humidity and the 16mm ortho has typical worm traces in the coatings from fungus, but overall they didn’t look too bad.

 The objective on the other hand had me really worrying. Small pits were visible under a loupe in the front coating and clumps of what looked like fungus was visible on the inside surface. I gently swabbed it clean with isopropyl and optical cleaning cloths and superficially it looked ok. So I gave it first light last night.

i could certainly see the potential of this little scope with rich contrasty images of the moon. But everything was bathed in a hazy glowing glare like when my dob secondary has misted up on very rare occasions. The photos below don’t pick this up but it was unpleasant through the ep. The iPhone pics of the moon were pretty good actually- in some ways preferable to those I’ve taken with my dob although they all have a violet shift. At higher mags everything had a violet fringe and Venus at 140x with the 6mm ortho was shocking in its violet incarnation. 

Looking through the scope without ep and with a strong source of light offset a circular patch of diffusion can be seen and under the right light with a loupe this patch is filled with small pits on the inner surface of the objective. This is I’m sure fungal damage and irreparable. This is I think causing a diffusion and the hazy image.

So I wrote to the seller and informed him I’d like to send it back as tbh I don’t think I would use it much with all the haze/ flare. He’s been very good actually and asked me if there was a value I’d propose it was worth in this condition if I were to keep it. I bought it to look through rather than as a pretty ornament (which it is) so I think it’s going back. What would you do? Any opinions on if it has any value? I guess if I had another it’d be handy for spares but I have way too much junk already 

Hi L8, yes I’m already besotted with it- it’s the sort of vintage quality and design  that’s right up my street. It came with the standard 6 and 16mm orthos and the 25mm Huygens. They too were crusted in dust but seem to have cleaned up ok though they’re not in the best condition cosmetically with some corrosion of the mazac  body parts and loss of paint. Glass seems pretty clear though 👍

Hi Stu, yes I believe so- it says Telementor 2 on the box. I bought it unseen and am umming  and ahhing whether to keep or return it as it has a few issues. It’s obviously been stored in a loft for decades and all the optics had crusted on dust- it cleaned off fairly ok but there’s a few specs in the coatings of the objective. Hoping for a gap in the clouds tonight to give it first light before deciding. But it is a gorgeous thing and I totally get now why some become Telementalists having actually seen and held  one in the flesh 😉

My first refractor arrived!

Didn’t see any Lyrids last night or the nights before but the skies in London have been very hazy and light polluted. Did catch a head on orange explosion though at around 1am near the Big Dipper- pretty impressive but I don’t think it was a lyrid.

Did you find Tegmine yet Baz? I find it by imagining a line through Gemini intersecting a line vertically up from Procyon and it’s a little to the left of that intersection- point the scope thereabouts and look for the brightest “star” in the finder 👍🤞