Swift Audubon HR/5 - repairing the eyepiece arm

[DaveL59]

once the F1 race finished I took a look at fixing the parts with epoxy, roughed up the surfaces lightly with a file and then wipe over with degreaser. Once dry mixed the 2-part Gorilla epoxy and fitted the parts together.

Likely the screws will be held with the epoxy too, perhaps not so good but its done and set now lol.

I popped in a dimple for the IPD index then after a test fit realised it's too close to the hinge, hence there's 2 - yeah measure once and all that rather than take a guess. It'll be hidden tho so who'll know  

Will file/grind back the epoxy to level once it's had a long while to set and then this part can be prepped for painting. Prior to this I test fitted the whole thing back onto the body with occular and eyecups, pleased to report it ran as it should and alignment was looking good when scanning the rooftops and aerials. So far so good...

Edited July 12, 2020 by DaveL59

[RT65CB-SWL]

Pun not intended... but this is a 'riveting' good read! 

[DaveL59]

I had actually considered rivets too 😛 

[DaveL59]

Today I ground back the epoxy and smoothed up the metal edges then hit it with some primer...

Looks ok I think, will let that cure and hit it with some black over the next few days and this phase will be pretty much done  

[DaveL59]

so much for waiting a day or so...

Will leave it till tomorrow now to see how it looks once dry, might be too matt to match up with the rest of the original paint.

[DaveL59]

hmmm that matt black is a bit too different I think

Given it a hit of hammerite black spray and will see how that looks. Probably have to respray the other arm to get things matched I expect.

 

[DaveL59]

a bit closer - coat of hammerite black on top of the matt paint

so off with the other arm it is then and see if I can get them to match... or madness sets in first 😉 

[DaveL59]

ok, After the disaster of yesterday and the vintage scope objective... nice to have something positive to post today  

Returning to this repair, so I smoothed and refinished the broken arm and resprayed the other to match, Looks reasonably good tho still a little rougher finish on the repair looking closely. It'll do tho I think.

Need to sort a better set screw as this is flat ended and not gripping quite well enough. Might file a slot or drill the centre pivot to help it out.

Still, on with the occulars and eyecups etc and you'd hardly know it'd been broken. Runs smoothly through the focus range at various IPD's and alignment seems good so far too.

Will get around to doing a strip down and internal clean at some stage and fix the crack in the plastic dioptre eyecup, but for the moment these are revived and quite usable again, not too bad a result considering the issues with them when they arrived. 

[RT65CB-SWL]

Well done that man! - excellent result.    

[MarkAR]

Nice job.

[Stormbringer]

that really is good repair 🍻

[markse68]

3 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

Still, on with the occulars and eyecups etc and you'd hardly know it'd been broken.

beautiful work Dave- like you say you’d never know they’d been repaired! 👏

 

[DaveL59]

thanks Mark, it looks reasonable I think, but you would notice if you looked closer as the steel is slightly higher than the ally so a slope at the join where I files the epoxy. But then I preferred to keep the ally as thick as I could get away with for strength  

[DaveL59]

Collimation checking against the stars looks good, scanned across to Jupiter and Saturn and finally found Neowise in the sky from the back garden, between houses, my first sighting of it and with these HR/5's no less. Very nice view comet and tail and nice and clear so I'm very pleased with the results of the repair, a real bargain pair of binos they've turned out to be 😄