Doc

Spent a few hours today raising the height of the Fullerscope mount so the polar axis casing clears the adapter plates. A lump of ash wood 65mm thick was used. There is now enough room between the casing and plates to design a turnbuckle to raise and lower the polar axis to enable polar alignment.

The last one is a video.

Hi David welcome to SGL.

Just in case you are not aware there is an astronomy forum based in Nottingham that you can join it's called East midlands Stargazers just click on the lik below.

https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/

I wouldn't clean it yet, what I would do is have an observing night and see if it warrents cleaning. Just having a few dust particles doesn't sound to bad too me. If you do go down the cleaning route, remove the fan if it has one and clean the mirror while attached to the cell.

Watched the last episode today, I loved every moment of it, one of the best Star Trek's I've seen. Cannot wait for series two.

3 hours ago, johnturley said:

It looks like your mount has stainless steel shafts, the original Mark III (which I once had), and I'm pretty sure the original Mark IV also, had mild steel shafts making them prone to rusting.

John 

The magnet still sticks on the shaft so my guess is Chromium plated steel. I'm sure magnets don't stick to Stainless.

I have been thinking about what you said Rusted and went into the shed to set up an experiment.

As you can see from the photo's below. I first tried a 45mm lump of wood and then set the PA to 53° which is the correct latitude for nottingham and the gap between the casting and the adapter is about 10mm.

I then included another piece of wood to make the height 60mm and this gave me a gap of 22mm.

So in essence any lump of aluminium between 40mm and 60mm will do. Where would you connect the adjuster, I see you have connected yours around the circumference of the end of the PA casing, but thats a little close for mine to the adapter plates.

Anyway time to mull this over.

I have thought about this already Rusted and I have to either take a slice out of the back off the adapter to match the base of the fullerscope mount that will give me the clearence or cut a reccess into the adapter plate so the mount body fits between the adapter plates, similar to what you have done in the second photo. I don't really want to add another big lump of metal, it's going to look a bit over the top.

Then I need to come up with something like your turnbuckle design to fine adjust it. The bottom of yours is attached to your pier, I don't have that luxury, where can I attach it to?

The planet tripod is very good indeed easily holds the weight of the Fullerscope and my other handmade mounts.

Thanks for your input.

Hi Ed,

Yes it was from Kevin in Danbury, a very nice gentleman indeed had a great chat with him.

12 minutes ago, Stu said:

A few from me. Fluorite twins side by side on the AZ100. Tak FC100 and Vixen FL102S f8.8. Didn’t have much time comparing them but will do soon I hope.

Quick one of the Tak in Solar WL mode with Herschel Wedge and Binoviewers.

Last one is the solo Tak on Vixen GP mount, tracking Venus this evening. Very nice views at x246 with the Nag Zoom at 3mm. Looking pretty sharp, some vague detail on the terminator.

I’m very pleased with my latest attempt at polar aligning. I left the scope tracking Venus for about an hour this evening at x246 and it was still in the field of view when I came back! Keeps the sun nicely centred too of course.

Stu can I ask you where you got your slow motion control cables from?

Thanks

Spent a little time in the workshop today. Last year I purchased two 11" diameter aluminium blanks for another project that I didn't get round to so I used these to make an adapter to join the Fullerscope to the Barlebach tripod. I wanted to incorporates an azimuth adjustment slot that gives the operator about 20 degrees of adjustment for polar aligning so after a few minutes of head scratching I came up with this. They are a little large in diameter but I don't have anyway to make them smaller, they are way to big for my lathe.

One day I must get a dividing head or rotary table but drilling and filing the slots kept me fit. The next job is to sort some adjustment in altitude, better start scratching my head again.

6 hours ago, des anderson said:

Always a dream to own a Mk4 and I changed my mind when I got my first newt from Dudley at Fullerscopes he said I would regret it and I did. Enjoy your refurbish. Des

I don't understand either 

Get a centre punch and gently tap the broken screw around till it comes out, worth a try.

Many thanks Rusted for your contribution to this thread. I must say your blog is a wonderful read and packed full of information regarding Fullerscopes, you must be proud.

Regarding the RA and Dec axis shafts, I placed a magnet on them and it stuck very well so I would say they are steel and not stainless steel but i could be wrong.

I think it's about 35Kg. I have seen a photo of one mount with four telescopes on it. Also it carries a 6" F15 no problems.

Thanks guys for all your comments.

I have wanted one of these ever since I wandered around the Fullerscope shop in East London way back in the early 80's. I was always drooling at the 6" refractor sitting on the Fulerscope IV mount but in those days could never afford it and had no where to put it.

So the idea with this one is to make an adapter so it sits on top of my planet tripod. Fit stepper motor drives to the worm gears and fit a go-to system via Nexus 11 so it's wireless with either my phone or Ipad.

If it hasn't already got stainless steel shafts fit them, regrease all the bearings and clean up the worm gears.

Some sort of magnifying glass with built in red light in front of the needle so you can read the degrees or hours easier on the brass circles.  Only problem is to make it small enough so to not look out of place.

Replace all fixings with brass nuts and bolts.

Not sure of a paint job, I like the way it is. Maybe a good polish with some beeswax and a protective laquer. Maybe a preservation not a restoration.

It will give me something to do while in self isolation LOL.

Look what I required the other day. It's a Fullerscope IV Mount, it came complete with lots of counterweights and two worm drives with reduction gearboxes and motors. Unfortunately these didn't work and the wiring was very old and dangerous.

It needed a really good clean, a lot of elbow grease, the bronze gears were very tarnished, almost black in places. I didn't take photos off the original state, I forgot I was too keen to clean it up.

The axis are very smooth, the shafts have no rust on them as they were originally made of steel, maybe these are stainless I will have to check later.

I will have to make up a plate to connect the mount to my barlebach planet tripod.

Below are lots of photos of the beast.

I haven't used my TAL100r for years, I bought it new at least 15 years ago maybe more, I used to have hours of fun with it. Has yours got a number stamped on it, mines number 33.

23 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Not the biggest or the best but it's all mine.

Love all those machines as well. Is that a Colchester Student lathe?

That was lovely read, sounds like you had a great night. The double cluster always amazes, I have been looking at it for more then 20 years now and it still captivates me everytime.

Maybe look for thinner flocking I'm sure you can get 025mm and 0.75mm.

Here's a video on youtube off my mount.

My two homemade alt/az mounts

I only have one pair and they are the Swarovski EL 10x50 binoculars with Swarovision, simply amazing for stargazing and birding.

I have the Rukl book of the moon which is the last photo you show. It's an excellent book and rather expensive to buy now, look after it as it's an investment now.

What I found good was tapping the scope very lightly so the eyepiece view wobbled this sometimes made the object appear against the background. Also sweeping the area while looking through the eyepiece had the same effect. Most of the time it's just experience, you get to see the mottled effect a DSO has against the grey/black background.

13 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Nodding Doc mount, me thinks. Serious question. What was the motivation for building this mount? 

I can see from the build quality it is very impressive and I can only wish I had the skills to design and make something approaching the nodding doc.

More power to you

Marvin

The "Nodding DocMount" I like it Marvin.  As for motivation I suppose it was to use the machines I bought for my workshop. I bought a Myford and a Sharp Milling machine after hunting around for a first class Alt/Az mount.

A friend of mine had already purchased a DiscMount DM6 and after looking at it in the flesh I thought this would be quiet easy to build and in fact make it stronger, more capable of handling larger loads. I later done the same with the TTS Panther mount which you can see above.

Both of my mounts can hold a considerable weight without any wobble and are well made. They are not anodised or anything but have kept the shine I gave them.

I have designed a new mount which I'm going to make over the winter based on the gimbal design.