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Hi all, how's it going? I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for my question. If it isn't, my apologies. Could a moderator move it to the correct one? I have an older blue livery Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 that I bought off Marktplaat, (a Dutch/Belgian online trading site) for a steal. The scope works well. I wanted to go a step further and make it work fantastically. I decided to flock the tube and give it a good servicing and cleaning. The primary mirror had so much dust and grime on it, I was considering planting potatoes in it. The secondary mirror just needed a few puffs of air. There was a really annoying red fibre stuck on the back of the meniscus lens. This was causing a huge dust bunny in my Lunar images. The scope definitely needed cleaning. With the help of a plumber's strap wrench, I managed to remove the meniscus lens cell and primary mirror cell. Thanks to Baader Wonder cleaning fluid, a Baader Optical Wonder Cloth, a gazillion Kleenex tissues, a good rocket blower and a quality camel hair brush, the cleaning and flocking went really smoothly. Here's the part that went wrong. There's a rubber O-ring that sits between the primary mirror cell and the telescope tube The one on my Mak had started to perish and was getting sticky. The inevitable happened - it broke! I've jerry rigged it the best I can. It'll work. The Mak will definitely need collimating; however, that's no big deal. Trying to find a new O-ring, is like searching for chicken's teeth. 🙄 Does anyone know where I can find a replacement O-ring? Many thanks for the help, it's much appreciated. Clear Skies! 🔭😀

Do these lens edges look black to you? Uuh, yeah, sure! But now? Oooh! That was the blackening applied to my new Astro-Professional doublet. Bear in mind that the light exiting at the front first had to pierce the layer of blackening on the other side, but it remained pretty intense, right? Good commendable will on the scope maker's part, and job done, but a second layer of felt marker paint was in order. Yes, paint, felt markers actually apply a kind of paint mixed with a solvent that evaporates very quick. Thus it's quite natural that a second layer is needed for opacity. Stray light will take any path that's open, and bounce off the rough side of glass that has the ideal texture to spread it in every direction, so I also treat bevels. Look at the previous pics, they were not covered at all. The real black distinguishes itself strongly from the mere factory gray. If you knew the lens' specs, and the angle of vision, you could reconstruct an image of that room with a specialized software, but that's another story. While I had the lenses out of the cell, I made permanent rotation marks. A ghost of the factory inverted "V" is visible, I made scratches with a needle the first time I opened the cell, but during the first reassembly I suspect the lenses have rotated because a miniscule amount of paint at the wrong place made the rings sticky. Turning them made the lenses turn, I suppose, based on some loss of snap at the eyepiece, while the star test seemed similar. For future maintenance I dug two notches with the edge of a diamond-coated knife sharpener. Thanks to diamond hardness the job was done in seconds. But what happened to those unblack edges, you ask? That compact led flashlight is viciously powerful but not enough for two layers of black paint at entry and two at the exit. An optician wrote that paint (or ink?) hardens and shrinks enough to compress a lens out of ideal shape, that could be detectable in sensitive tests. Maybe, because the tolerances are only several dozens or hundreds of molecules; 500 nanometers in wavelength of light divided by a good lamba/20 wavefront would amount to only 25 nanometers, we're talking layers of molecules, here. But I still don't figure if the claim is far-fetched or not. The two rear rings have been painted with ordinary blackboard paint. It can chip, I know, however unlike lacquer it dries fast enough to not interrupt the work session, and it's so easy to reapply. The black lens edges coupled to the matte rings produce this effect: the lenses seem to vanish. Direct light from two lamps, a white ring under the cell reflects light at the same angles as intrusive light during real-world observation, but only an extremely faint ghosting occurs. Do you see it? Why two locking rings, by the way? Because a single one could make the lens it touches turn, and ruin the critical rotation alignment. The second buffer ring prevents that. A little not-yet-dry paint that bleeded between them may have caused the problem for a while. Of course, at shallow angles the lenses reflect some light, but the rings behind them remain discreet. It took a white ceiling and a white column (plus a Strat) to make these reflections. Some blackboard paint bled inside the cell scribing, which is not bright ink but an actual etching done into the aluminum with an interesting pointy tool, that's why it's shiny gray. Instead of spending time trying to scrape it, I filled all the letters and numbers; it created a nice, unique variant. Turns out, I always wanted a cell with dark engraving, and it's not lazyness talking. The bevel and the inside of the outer cell is matted-painted, too. If you own an Hyperion eyepiece, the hard, dull black finish in the barrel is the ideal finish but I don't konw how to do it, unaware if it's a paint (doubt it) or some chemical process. I often stargaze from my city, lamps everywhere, so I don't want any shiny areas. Everything but the optical surfaces should be dull black. This will also be useful if I do astrophoto one day - uh, one night - because cameras are so sensitive, and exposures so long, any stray light could damage contrast. But, Ben, but Ben! What are those white dots on the outside of the cell? I never liked the velours that barely puts the brakes on the dewshield's motion, and lets it wobble. The solution is those simple foamy rubber adhesive pads. Trial and error determined the right number was eight. A ring of pads at the very rear of the cell, and another at the very front suppress wobble completely, and they keep the dewshield in place even with a 700 gram tilt-lock (my invention so I get to name it) counterweight attached to it, with the scope pointing vertically. A strip of tape takes marks at the screws' location. I remove the strip, measure the separation of the marks while it's on a flat surface, put it back on the cell, and voilà! Perfect centerline for the rubber pads. Removing lenses means recentering them but their screws are not standard, so I recut a damaged mini screwdriver... ...and quickly glued pieces of any tubing I had to repair the handle and make it more ergonomic. The two notches in different shapes at the screwsdriver's collar help me keep track of turns and half-turns. This slot shape is not standard, a non-matching driver would damage the plastic: The tolerance between cell and lenses was nicely tight, but thanks to the extra thickness of paint, they almost self-align. After inserting them, and driving the screws at the same depth, I did an artificial star-test, found only one screw needed 1/8th turn to get near-perfect centering. The lenses require a gentle push on the side with a toothpick in order to be seated in the cell. They just slide against the cell walls without rubbing, and exit the same without catching. If they were too close to the walls, centering screws would be disabled, and thermal pinching could occur. It seems to have turned out pretty okay. The semi-apo quality shows in the very pale lime, almost white disk, and the purple ring. Intrafocal thru Explore 4.7mm eyepiece (120x). The Explore 4.7 increases chromatism in this refractor and in my achro, but the Myriad 9 reduces it, however it does not magnify enough for star-testing. That rounds up my first line of defense against stray light. How does it perform? Well, with the dewshield retracted, and two lamps shining into the cell from less than two meters: The glass edge and its retaining rings don't shine, and they cast a nice black shadow. The two baffles down the tube are not enough, though, I need to add a couple more, that will be for a later date.

Hello, It's been a long time since I've posted in this forum, anyway I've picked up a Skywatcher 200p F/6 dobsonian as a DIY project whilst I continue to work on a new telescope from scratch, (I've started to grind the mirror). I'll be making improvements to this dobsonian as a project and learning experience, I've already got a temperature controlled fan which has a probe that can measure both mirror and ambient temperature. I'll be measuring the primary mirror with my in progress Foucault/Ronchi/Bath Tester when that's finished in the next couple of weeks, may even refigure it depending on results. But I'm most excited about this right now. The blackest Black Paint as an alternative (hopefully better alternative) to flocking! This stuff is seriously black and flat, I backed it on kickstarter and received 3 bottles along with goodies. I plan on painting the area opposite the focuser, area around the primary mirror, inside the focuser drawtube, potentially the secondary mirror holder and edge of the secondary also. It's a shame I don't have any flocking to compare it with but it looks incredible. This video shows just how impressive it is (moreso than my little tester I've done). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJIIzcbRD9w I'll try and get some decent before and after pics. Dan

Hi all. After upgrading my Skywatcher Startravel 120 refractor with a nice new dual speed 2" Crayford focuser, I also splashed out on some flocking to install in the frac too after reading good positive things about flocking the inside of your telescope to reduce light glare and improve image contrast. Not going to do the flocking until I have fitted a new synta shoe for my finder scope to the tube (so most likely a job for next weekend at the earliest), but was just wondering if anyone else has flocked their refractor at all? Most people that I read who had flocked their scopes were talking about Newtonians or big dobs, so just curious if flocking my frac will improve my views? As the flocking only cost just under £12 with p&p from FLO if it doesn't do too much then nothing much lost anyway.

Hi all, I've already posted this on my blog, but I thought I'd share it here as well, as I know it's something of interest to a lot of people. I spent a good chunk of last Saturday actually flocking the scope, and most of Sunday morning re-collimating it, and on Sunday evening I managed an hour and a half under the stars checking out whether it made a difference. I set up the scope for about 8.30, and got straight on with viewing Jupiter. The scope hadn't had time to cool properly, and the seeing was somewhat unsteady, but the GRS was very obvious at x250, the brick red colour also obvious, but little other detail. Deciding that I stood the best chance of detecting whether the flocking made a difference would be when viewing faint objects, I swung the scope round to M101 and then M51. The former was little more than a smudge, but the latter had clear signs of spiral arms and bright cores, definitely a little more contrasty than I remember. The Sunflower galaxy in Canes Venatici was very bright, but had little detail on show (I put this down to the seeing being unsteady, and the galaxy being still quite low). The Leo Triplet was brilliant. Nice and high, all three galaxies were bright and sharp in the 24mm MaxVision (x50). NGC 3628 was very obvious. I panned down through the bowl of Virgo, spotting over a dozen galaxies, but I've viewed this area before with better contrast and detail. I put this down to the seeing, and the fact that the constellation was still so low in the east. As galaxies were on the agenda for the evening, I thought I'd go for the nine shown in the bowl of the Big Dipper in the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas (prompted by a recent SGL post). I managed four of the nine (I'm pretty definite I got the lower ones - NGCs 3982, 3998, 3898 and 3780 - the latter, if I'm right, mag 12.65 and an incredible 146 million light years a way; and a new record for me!). I decided to try a couple of star clusters (the Owl and Double in Cassiopeia and Perseus). Both were very clear and sparkly, with, I'd say, a definite improvement in contrast. Subtle, though ... Finally, I swung the scope round to Orion. Wow! This is where the difference was immediately obvious. Although I didn't see more in the Great Nebula itself, de Mairian's nebula was brighter than I'd ever seen it, and just below it, the Running man practically leaped out at me, a very obvious darker band sandwiched between two brighter sections, plus other detail/structure. I swung the scope up to where the Horse head nebula should be (never seen it), and again wow! Although I didn't spot the HH itself, there was very obvious dark nebula in the area, and I feel sure that, had I had more time, I'd have bagged the horse. So ... flocking: is it worth it? I'd say definitely yes. The obvious nebulosity around Orion itself makes it a no brainer, and I feel pretty confident that it helped with the Leo triplet and the four out of the 'nine in the bowl' of the Big Dipper. As for star clusters, the jury's still out, and I think it would take a side-by-side comparison with an un-flocked scope to really be sure. Hope you find that useful. Kev

The coming wet weather is the perfect opportunity to treat my baby to some upgrades and mods. My XT10i is to be pampered with: Telrad finder on a 4" riser Primary mirror cooling fan Protostar flocking Bob's Knobs on secondary Moonlite CR2 focuser Fingers crossed it all goes well and my baby will be even more wonderful. :-)

Looking at flocking my C9.25 and need to remove the corrector plate and secondary. Simple question, how do you remove the corrector when there are 2 lugs in the way that the front cover use? I can't see how to get the corrector ring / corrector past out without removing them, they look like they are part of the support ring and not added after. Photo will hopefully explain this better.

Has anyone on here had any experience dealing with Protostar? its just that 3 weeks ago i made an order with them on their website for a few meters of sticky backed flocking material and as yet i havent even received a confirmation e-mail from them. I payed for it using Paypal and the transaction went through so i assume they actually have my order, although i e-mailed them about a week back just to ask for confirmation from them that the order was been dealt with and i havent as yet had any reply from them.I was just wondering if this was normal practice for this company?? Im not overly concerned about the time its taking to get to the UK as its coming from the USA but i thought some sort of acknowledgment of my order surely isnt to much to ask for is it?.

I have just ordered a 150P from FLO and pending its arrival I am reading up a bit on them, it seems that some people have noticed an improvement in contrast by flocking the inside of the tube, and also that fitting a dew shield is recommended. I can acquire a suitable dew shield, no problem there, but I have a question or several regarding flocking. What would I need to do in order to flock the inside of the tube? Do I need to remove the secondary mirror or anything else, and would I need to just cover the entire tube inside so that no original paintwork is showing? How difficult is it? Should I apply in sections, and if so does it matter how large or what shape the sections are so long as they are edge to edge? How many rolls of the flocking sheet that FLO sell would I need for the 150P? Should I flock the outside too? (I saw a post where someone wrapped what looked like pipe insulating foam around the entire OTA) Thank you for any advice!

Hi guys and gals There's been a lot of buying and some modding in the Souith Wales area and I have to admit some of it concerning the flocking of a scope took my interest. I live in a great position for observation but there is the dreaded light pollution to deal with, AND, I have a Heritage 130P which has an 'open structure' Anyway the original scope looks like this I removed the primary mirror and flocked the main tube. With the advantage of having the scope in this state I played with the idea of constructing a black card tube, which would slide into the main tube as the scope was closed down and of course would extend as the scope was opened, it too could be flocked and thereby give me a compact scope that would travel with me and give me a fully flock lined tube too These pics just ilustrate the other positions showing the tube extending etc. I also added a couple of layers of flocking to the end of the new tube extension which remains inside the main tube, this acts as a light trap and may eventually allow its use for solar, but I need to take care with this aspect In any event it will give me a higher contrast telescope for night observation and help with the light pollution Gordon

Found various threads on here and other forums about flocking dobsonians/newtonians but couldn't find specific images of disassembly of the very popular SkyWatcher Heritage 130p flextube and flocking of the OTA. So having ordered some DC-Fix black velour sticky back material (can be got from various places including FLO) I thought i'd share some photos of the process from start to finish as it may help someone else in the future... Images below with notes... 1. Focuser and shield flocking This was the easy bit. A strip stuck inside the focuser, and just unscrew the shield, draw round it, cut the material and align and smooth down. In the last image above you can already see the significant improvement on reducing reflections comparing the flocked shield to the unflocked tube... Notice my version of Bob's Knobs on the secondary mirror which are just black steel M4 25mm knurled thumbscrews bought off ebay for about £7 - along with the thumbscrews already on the 130P primary mirror this makes any fine collimation easy and completely tool free! For full stealth mode I've also painted the edge and rear of the secondary mirror, and any exposed screw heads with blackboard paint to reduce reflections. 2. OTA disassembly and tube before Note the cutout in the lower primary housing and the top ring. This aligns with the ridge of the tube seam, and means there is only one way to reassemble the telescope tube and mirror and one place for the handful of screws (4 at the bottom, 3 at the top). You'll also need an allen key to remove the 3 bolts for the dovetail mount. Simple! Now you're ready to Flock 'N' Roll! 👍🏻 3. Flocking the tube You'll need approx. 50cmx29cm of the material to do the tube in one go, starting along the seam. As others have described just take your time here, peel off about an inch of the backing and get the edge aligned with the tube seam stick down firmly and smooth out any air bubbles. Then slowly keep peeling more backing (rip and remove if the excess gets in the way) and smooth down as you go, turning the tube and affixing the velour material. 4. Finished flocking and close up during application so you can see contrast/reflection comparison of before and after. All in all only took around an hour so not a hard job as long as you prepare and concentrate! I ordered one sheet of 45cm x 1m material which was plenty, however if your not as confident you'll get it right first time then order 2m so you have more to spare if you need to start again. Looks great, so as always I now just need clear skies to go play and see the difference it makes!

Don't blame me for the silly pun, Tele Vue actually used it in their ads back in the days when they were written on paper. Now that you are enlightened by this piece of trivia in the history of advertising, here's the topic. My urban observing spots are surrounded by public lamps so I need complete blackening in my finders as well as my scopes, or arcs of light and various shapeless flares will show when I don't aim high. Little stars in a 30mm scope can't compete, star-hopping is made difficult. This is how I do the blackening. I start with the amici prism. Cleaning it with alcohol proved necessary, some grease was on the exposed faces. Next I paint the rough surfaces with a sharpie. And the rough edges, too. When all non-polished places are black, funny, it's actually possible to make the prism look all black from a certain angle. Then its housing was not cleanly put out of its mold. I don't like finding uneven stuff, so I rectified it even it if was not important for the finder's function. 40-grit did the job in a couple minutes. The plate side is rough from the 40-grit paper but is now planed, the plate will screw onto it without leaving gaps. From its usable angles the prism now looks like that: a clear window with black sides that will absorb stray light. Larger amici prisms for full-size scopes might require the same treatment; practicing on cheaper stuff makes it less intimidating. The housing is garnished with blackboard paint. See how the inside and the barrel are darker than the surface with the screw holes. This paint is water-based, doesn't smell, dries in minutes, and can be removed from places it covers by accident, just scrape it and rub with a wet towel, not a trace will remain. But it sticks hard enough to not chip over time. Have you seen you school's blackboard chip? The sharpie also cures the objective lenses' rough edges disease. Another funny effect, when the side is barely half-blackened, the untreated edge already looks gray, as if black could reflect on other things; this is promising for the final effect! The promise is kept! In main scopes or finders, this black ring will kill off nearly all the light that touches it, I can guarantee it from experience! The dewshield (made in the proper length by Sky-Watcher, by the way, congrats!) is also painted. See how the bare anodized aluminum ring at the rear is shiny. I don't paint that area or the doublet won't enter. Its own layer of sharpie paint plus the blackboard paint would be too much. Where are all those white dust specks coming from? The retaining ring is a treacherous spot in telescopes because the total area is large even if the thing is narrow, can't leave it shiny, especially at those grazing angles! See the difference with the threaded outside of it. Not an essential job in a finder but done it a minute, so why not? The eyepiece lenses were white on the side, too, Before the sharpie touch, the objective was that white and bright, but you'd be surprised how quickly the non-yet-painted part turns dark gray when you start painting the rest. The inside of these retaining rings will receive the blackboard touch. Now that's how things should look! Both the lenses and their bevels are coated in black. The bevels seem a bit shiny from this angle but their absorption of bad light is vastly better. The eyepiece is a simple Plössl, only two cemented doublets with rounder bellies facing each other, mounting them right is foolproof, unlike other optical designs. You can improve the contrast in unexpensive and simple eyepieces with a good blackening. Costs nothing, proportionate to the thing's price. The eyepiece is fully-multi-coated, by the way, more congrats to Sky-Watcher for taking accessories seriously. Another improvement: the tiny original screws are replaced by homemade larger screws. Those white plugs are used in the assembly of furniture, but only one tool store had them, and only once. I bought the two packs they had, can't find them anymore, anonymous packaging. They include a piece of threaded 6mm rod of the right length, just had to plane the tip. I superglue a stainless washer at the top, and fill the space with O-rings. Only those at the outside need to be glued, the others are pinched between them. Just seeing the screws makes the advantages obvious, compare with the two original plastic screws. Hard to grab with gloves, or even without gloves for that matter. Now the flocking. The foam side of adhesive velcro is ideal for small areas. I don't glue it to the tube because that would make replacement messy. Instead, I glue it on a strip of paper. Then I fold it into a loop, and tape it. It's not round now but it will when it's forced inside the tube. That might be a useful trick when flocking larger tubes; glueing directly onto the tube allows no mistake, and can force you to leave a poorly applied flocking if it sticks too hard. Can't remove that thing but I need to adjust it! GRRRRR!! The finder is so short, only two rings did the job. Do not put that too close to the objective or it will enter the light cone. So, a few millimeters are not flocked but that's okay because the tube was already painted flat black, and all the rest of the finder is treated. Sky-Watcher put a sensible baffle in the back. There, the light cone is not eaten up by the foam, we have a clear view of the optics' edges from objective to eyepiece. The criteria are the same for bigger refractors. Before any flocking and blackening was done, the inside of the eyepiece was that shiny, the reflection on the side is very bright! Pic taken through the completely assembled finder. It was very tough getting a pic at the same angle, the flat camera objective is hard to position as accurately as the eye with its round cornea, but it's clear the lateral reflections are much dimmer. Again, picture taken through the complete finder even if it might look like the eyepiece was removed from the tube. Before the black-ops job. After the ninjas came. Sorry if the shot is blurry but the brightness comparison still stands. The area around the pupil is darker, and even the inside of the eyecup is darker since I applied a little blackboard paint there, too. It's shiny on the top picture but matte here. And if the difference does not impress you, see how the tests shots were made: with this setup, flashlight at an angle, and only one inch from the dewshield. Note how a few extra O-rings between the objective cell and the finder bracket keep it from playing. Another set of O-rings between the prism housing and the bracket complete the task. Finders moving fore and aft, and allowed to rotate lose alignment. Thanks to the firm push of these rubber rings, the tube is held tight but free to be adjusted. I had to buy a few O-rings for something non-astro, but of course you have to take the whole box. Not liking to leave tools unused, I looked for ways to make these rings profitable. One of the useful tasks was as loosened screw safety. This finder won't fall off to the ground. She's not missing anymore.