Some paint repair required on the old Vixen

[Pixies]

Turns out that the OTA hadn't been moved within the rings for quite a while! So when I first tried to move the tube within the rings to balance it on the mount, it took a little bit of paint off as well as revealing the discoloured paint beneath the rings.

Unfortunately, since I'll be using a larger diagonal and Eps that the little 0.96" ones the previous owner had, plus I don't think he'd done much in the way of balancing, so it's not going to be sitting in the rings anywhere near the old position. 

I thought T-Cut would be suitable to restore the faded colour, but I'm not sure about the missing paint. The OTA is aluminium, so I don't think that car chip repair kits would be suitable. 

Does anyone have any experience of this sort of fix, or any advice? Also, I'll be looking to replace the material on the inside of the rings. Any suggestions?

 

Cheers.

[Peter Drew]

The paint chips appear to be at a similar spacing to the rings spacing.  They may have been caused by the screws to attach the rings to the mount being too long.  If this is the case, the rings could be moved to cover them, even if it means having to rebalance the tube.  Self adhesive felt could reline the rings.     

[Pixies]

Yes- it was under the rings (but not the screws):

If I slide the scope back so that the rings cover the marks again, the scope is well unbalanced. I could try adding weight at the objective end to balance it out, but I'd rather be able to slide the tube about freely.

I will get some new felt, though. Good call.