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home made telescopes


nathanhatton

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I agree with Mr Spock, building your own scope isn't really a cheap alternative but you can certainly make a better scope than you can buy.

Building your own scope allows you to use the kind of high quality parts that few manufacturers would use.

Most scope makers use budget parts to keep there prices down this obviously means that it isn't hard to build something of higher quality.

Regards Steve

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I agree with the Vulcan. If you want to have a go at making your own it is far cheaper to buy a used tube and then use the bits to create your own scope.

Whether it's cheaper than buying new depends on how you buy and what size mirror you want. At under 12" it can be cheaper to buy e.g. a dobsonian new (and certainly is cheaper second hand).

Above 12" then you start to make real savings.

I bought a 16" primary (excellent OOUK quality), the tube and rings from the previous owner and then bought a good quality focuser, secondary and spider and made the mirror cell, alt bearings and dob base myself. I ended up with a super quality 16" f4 telescope for about a third of new OOUK price and about £400 less than a 16" skywatcher manual flextube dob. I believe my scope works more smoothly and is lighter and just as portable as the SW.

Here's a pic of mine. for scale the flags are 600x900mm so storage is not a problem with a 2 foot square footprint. the SW base at this size is round with a diameter almost 50% bigger.

post-17776-133877736855_thumb.jpg

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