dovetail v to d upgrade

[alacant]

Hi everyone. I was impressed by the stability which wide dovetails bring to my mount. Whilst the saddle upgrade for the mount was a reasonable  €20, a 300mm  plate cost over €60. Is it possible to buy say a 1000mm length of ready milled plate and cut to length oneself or WHY? TIA.

[Putaendo Patrick]

It's theoretically possible - I just don't know the cost for a one off custom job. To give you an idea, http://metalcuttosize.co.uk

can supply the metal blank. For example a flat steel bar 6mm x 80mm x 1000mm would cost about 26 pounds. Then add the cost of milling it.

You might ask around locally in Spain. In Alicante: http://www.inoxconalicante.com/

And another couple of companies who work with lasers in steel: http://www.plegadosnicolas.es/  and http://hjl.es/corte-por-laser/

Even if these can't do what you need, they should have some idea of who can in the area.

[Waldemar]

Stainless steel will be very expensive and hard to work with. You can use aluminum as well and anodize it yourself once you drilled the neccessary holes and cut it to length. Anodising will prevent the aluminum to corrode and gives it a hard skin.
This is the method to be used: http://www.coatfab.com/anodising.htm  I did it myself a couple of times with 15% sulfuric acid solution and roof lead for the cathode. Do NOT put iron or steel or any other metal in the solution!!! If you want colour you can use a dye that is used for clothing,  but without dye it looks very nice as well, kind of matt light grey. If you do it outside at low temperatures the skin gets very hard.  Be very carefull with the sulfuric acid if you are going to try this. Poor the sulfuric acid into the water not the other way around. Use rubber gloves, an apron and eye protection!! Instead of sulfuric acid you can also use an organic acid like citric acid or acetic acid. Basically what you are doing with anodizing is fast oxidizing in a controled environment
for powersource you can us a battery charger like 12V  @ 4-8 Amps. Keep kids and animals far away from it.

[Davey-T]

I've made a couple of dovetail bars out of aluminium, not too difficult but hard work by hand.

Dave

[alacant]

Hi and thanks for the ideas. Yeah, I think aluminium may be both lighter and easier to work. I've got as far as this but as yet have not located the same in Spain. I think 80mm x 12mm (?) is the size I need to fit the D saddle. It looks as though I could simply file an angle at each side -no need for the full length of the plate I don't think- and have it clamp safely to the saddle. The anodizing sounds doable too. Anyway, a little closer...