Flocking question

[Mattscar]

Being as everyone with a Newt seems to be having a flocking good time at the moment, I want to join in myself. Aside from fears about damaging something, colimation etc (I dont have a colimation tool yet) I have a question RE Thermal Expansion.

Everyone seems to mention Thermal Expansion when discussing flocking, but I can't find anything concrete anywhere about what causes it and what steps I should take in my flocking process to account for it.

There are several 'score it' or 'overlap it' comments knocking round, but to someone who is a little nervous about wrecking his new scope these dont really help much.

Any light someone could shed on this would be great

Matt

[Stargazer_00]

I wasn't aware of any of those concerns when I did mine. I overlapped everything. It's sitting in a shed right now getting pleasently baked by the sun.

I'll have a look to see if any of it comes off!

[Tinker1947]

I stripped every thing off then flocked,,,,,so no overlaps, colimation was the biggest chore, but that easy peasy once you get you head round why and how......

[Stargazer_00]

yeah dont flock it unless you can collimate everyting from scratch. you have to dismantle the scope so you possibly need to collimate everything. the secondary being the biggest object as it may require positioning

I say may because on my 6" it all needed doing but somehow on my 10" when I reassambled it everything was spot on perfect which made me laugh. I didn't have to touch a thing!

[Mattscar]

I which case I wont bother doing it until Iv got some form of colimation tool and know how to use it. The temptation is to use the case a webcam adapter I bought came in as a cheap one, but I know if I did that something would go wrong, I'd think Id done it right and then when I go to observe I'd have a very nice view of my foot or something ridiculous like that.

[Stargazer_00]

For sure a collimated scope would offer much better views than an uncollimated but flocked one.