Converting A Surveyors Tripod To Telescope Use.

[Jim78154]

I am nearly finished with this project. I only have to add a railing around the accessory tray, do some minor leveling and adjustments and then a new coat of paint. I found all of the materials locally at retail stores. The pedestal that you see is PVC sewer drain pipe. No worries, it's all new pipe. In case you are wondering, no, I didn't save any money over buying a tripod on the used market, but I certainly did enjoy designing and building the conversion. This tripod has triple locking legs and is light enough to carry in one hand while being as stable as a concrete block. I probably went through 10 or 12 permutations of nearly everything, but I finally got it where I wanted it. I don't want to take up too much space here, so here are three photos.

I invite your comments and suggestions.

Regards,

Jim

[Ruud]

It looks great, Jim. I believe you when you say those legs are solid as concrete! I'm curious. How do you put the scope on top? 

[Jim78154]

I didn't want to take up too much space with too many photos, but here it is with the SkyView Pro mount on it. It mounts with a 10 mm X 1.5 threaded rod that you can see coming up  through the bottom with a little additional help from the latitude adjustment mechanism not visible in this photo,

[davkt]

Looks great, even simpler conversion here, a £7.99 clamping bolt from ebay attached my Stellina to a tripod I've had kicking around since I was a land surveyor many careers ago. This tripod could hold a total station steady enough to make sub arcsecond measurement so should do the job on some astrophotos.

Edited October 26, 2020 by davkt

[theropod]

I’ve a Bosch surveyors tripod I use in my meteor fall efforts, and I love it. Solid as can be, light and weatherproof.