My TAL 100RS the story so far

[moriniboy]

About a month ago I bought it second hand from Dobbie via eBay.

As soon as I brought it home the dreaded cloud curse struck so I have spent the odd day or so over the last few weeks fettling the scope.

With no clear skies in the forseeable future I decided to plough on with some standard well known mods and trust that the outcome would be worth while.

To date I have worked on the following items:

1. Standard TAL Diagonal

Took to bits and found that the inside was just bare metal, so I matt blacked the whole of the inside including the tubes.

2. Standard TAL focuser

Stripped down fully and replaced all screws etc with allen head stainless steel items.

Whilst stripped down I flocked the inside of the focuser tube (the shiny area is where the diagonal seats which does not need to be flocked)

Before

After

I also found that the machined flat varied in height by 0.5mm so the focuser tube became slack when fully extended. I used an oilstone to reduce the height of the flat accordingly so that it is now a uniform height (loosing some of the paint finish in the process).

3. OTA tube

Stripped down fully, flocked first, second and fourth baffle gaps (unable to do third gap as my hands too big). Matt black painted all remaining areas and baffles.

Before

Work in progress

Whilst stripped down I noted that one of the screws holding the lens assembly in place had been incorrectly drilled at the factory so I rotated the assembly and re-drilled and tapped three new holes (increased in size from standard 3mm to 4mm).

Also fitted a shoe for a red dot finder (a black one is on order as the Skywatcher white one fitted does not match the TAL white and I'm a bit fussy about this)

Finally made a wooden box to carry the scope. I could not help painting the TAL logo on, it just felt right to do so.

Managed to get first light with the modded scope a couple of nights ago and Saturn was looking very good. The crescent of Venus also showed minimal CA which is a bonus.

Really enjoyed working on it so far, I'm going to collimate focuser and lens over the next week so things may even improve further.

Nigel

[nightfisher]

Very nice, you have been busy, i have just done the 9x50 finder mod on mine today and flocked the focuser end of the tube

[Bubbles82]

Like these simple mods looking to get the tal 100 rs myself,quick question can someone please tell me how long this scope is (including the dew shield) to where you place the diagonal

[AndyH]

Excellent !!

Or as they say in Russian......превосходный (prevosxódnyj).

[excellent, splendid, superior (possessing or displaying splendor); first-class]

Andy

[nightfisher]

Like these simple mods looking to get the tal 100 rs myself,quick question can someone please tell me how long this scope is (including the dew shield) to where you place the diagonal

1050mm long from focuser to end of dew shield:icon_salut:

[Bubbles82]

Thanks for the quick reply just trying to magic up some space to store it lol!

[AndyH]

Jules.

Tal quote it as 1080mm, so that must be with the diagonal in. So the quoted lengths of their scopes on their site must be pretty accurate. Good to know for future reference(125R is 1280mm ).

Ta,

Andy.

[Marki]

Nice job, Nigel. Looks really swish and I love the wooden box too .

[Qualia]

Impressive work, Nigel. The flocking looks very good and effective. I keep my own OTA in a telescope zip bag, but after seeing your box I feel I'm doing it injustice.

[sloz1664]

Well done Nigel. Glad to see you are not afraid to improve on what is a superb scope. I am toying with the idea of getting one myself. How can I disguise it as a garden ornament though.

Steve

[nightfisher]

Nigel, how did you flock the draw tube, having flocked the dew shield on mine, i think i might work my way down the tube a bit further

[moriniboy]

No problems, first of all you need to remove the focuser from the OTA, then the draw tube from the main focusing assembly, see below.

Note - If the draw tube is still not for coming out, just loosen the screws a bit more until it does.

Once the draw tube is removed I cut the flocking to suit and checked it in situ with the backing still left on to make sure it did not overlap at all.

As its an awkward area to work on I gave the the adhesive side of the flocking a misting of water (using a plant sprayer), ditto the inside of the draw tube, this stops it from instantly grabbing hold. I used a 12" ruler to smooth out the flocking against the tube and to push out any bubbles which had formed.

Once completed I left it 2 days to enable any excess water to evaporate and then painted any edges / joints with matt black paint to ensure that they do not loosen off in the future.

Its a bit daunting at first but I've now done 3 of them!

Nigel

[Coco]

Looking good, I was going to sell my RS but I might have to re consider, the views I get keep making me change my mind, I think it must be the best value visual scope around..

I fitted skywatcher white rings bought off FLO and modified, they work a treat..

.

[nightfisher]

Nigel, thanks for the tips on flocking the draw tube, i had a look at my one, its really light grey in colour, and will be flocked in the near future

[AndyH]

All great stuff Nigel !

Loving the wooden box. Something like that would be ideal for my Carton 60/1000.

You've all given me the bug too !

I've dug out my yr 2000 2M ota which I've not used in years. Giving it the once over, there are a few areas that I'm going to tackle.

Early newt tube interiors could sometimes give off quite a bit of a sheen. I'm not going to bother with flocking. The tube's a bit too long and after the success of matt backing the inside of my Tal 1, with blackboard-esque paint and a small roller brush, that's what I'll do here. It'll need to wait as I don't have enough. Bend a small sponge roller handle straight-ish and then 2 coats does the job.

I'll do the spider assembly and focuser drawtube, both of which are an unpainted dull metal, with this stuff....

£7 a pop. Gives a really nice finish and is especially good for hard to reach areas. Recommended.

Keep up the good work chaps and the more pics the better !!

Cheers,

Andy.

[dobbie]

hi nigel looks like your making a good job on my old scope , like the box touch , neat ,

[moriniboy]

Finished collimating yesterday, and went out for a quick hour last night.

Best view of Saturn was through my 12.5mm circle T but my 5 and 6mm BGOs also gave very good detailed but dimmer views.

Shame I was not able to first light it before the mods so I can't advise how much of a change there has been.

[Caldwell 14]

Well done, I never had the bottle to flock myself, it might have helped with the semi apo light scatter issue I had.

[AndyH]

Shame I was not able to first light it before the mods so I can't advise how much of a change there has been.

Should defo help with eeking out more contrast especially on bright objects like the Moon & Planets. I noticed an improvement on my 200K when I did various things.

Every little bit helps.

Andy.