Solid Mounted Dovetail Bar

[Jim L]

I mounted an extended dovetail bar on my Celestron Omni AZ 102 to make it easier to balance. It looks like this:

 

It not only made balancing easier, but it also moved the scope closer to the mount and was lighter than installing rings and a bar. It worked so well I decided to do the same to my AP ‘92 Stowaway. Here’s the before shot:

All set to go. Always use a punch to dimple your hole locations so your drill bit doesn’t walk. While in this case any scratches would be hidden by the dovetail, it’s best to practice good habits.

Sorry about the text block; I copied and pasted from my how-to post on CN. Moving on…

And the job completed.

Slick, right!  Things went pretty well, but there were a couple of things that could have gone better.

First, I secured the OTA in my large shop vice. Don’t worry, of course it has soft jaw inserts. Well, to keep the OTA from rotating in the vice I had to put some torque to it. That turned the tube in the vicinity of the vice jaws into a bit of an oval. No worries; I put the tube back in rotated 90° and squished it a bit from the other corner. It’s not perfect, and a short section is shaped a bit like a roundish square, but most folks probably wouldn’t notice.

Next, those latest generation Stowaway tubes are thick! I had to bear down on the drill and snapped the bit. The half that remained in the drill “kissed” the tube a little, which wouldn’t have been so bad except that it was still turning pretty fast at the time. I’m sure I can touch up the tube with a paint match from the auto paint store.

So two holes later I look into the end of the the tube and it seems I drilled into one of the baffles. I probably should have learned from my Omni AZ 102 how to avoid them, but apparently I did not. By now I’d gotten the drilling down to a science so the third hole was a cinch. So was the fourth, which I needed because my dovetail hole spacings are fixed and therefore so must be the hole spacings.

I probably shouldn’t have tipped the tube vertical to have a look down on my handiwork, but I think I got most all of the cuttings out of the tube and off of the inner lens with a straw taped to the end of my wife’s vacuum cleaner. That was a rookie mistake.

That’s pretty much it, or at least what jumps first to mind.

So all in all a success. There are a couple of extra holes, which I plugged with plastic caps made for the job, and a scratch that’s mostly hidden by the dovetail. I take those hidden marks in much the same spirit AP took when the anodizing flaked off the draw tube; what you can’t see won’t hurt you!

Anyone looking to do this is welcome to pm me for tips and tricks. Good luck!

Edited April 1 by Cornelius Varley
background colour to text removed

[John]

Interesting.

Drilling the tube of a Celestron is one thing but I'm not sure that I could bring myself to do the same on an AP Stowaway to gain that slight inwards movement of the DT bar.

Hope it works well for you though 🙂

[Jim L]

The Stowaway is a tool, much like any other. Anything that improves its function is a positive step. That said, it appears I’ve discovered a fly in the ointment. In my excitement it appears I installed the dovetail on the wrong side of the tube. I should have looked at the Omni dovetail orientation and not that of the way the Stowaway came from AP.

I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I hope not to repeat them. I expect the solid mounted dovetail installations on my Takahashis will go better.

Forgot to mention earlier. You want to use the dovetail bar that has raised ridges along the sides. They make much better contact with the OTA, and so provide better support.

[Stu]

I wonder what the date is today? 🤣

[John]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

I wonder what the date is today? 🤣

That was called on CN but the OP is still playing it straight there 🙂

 

[Cornelius Varley]

12 hours ago, Jim L said:

Sorry about the text block; I copied and pasted from my how-to post on CN. Moving on…

Formatting corrected.

Tip: if you use copy/paste as plain text the original text formatting is removed.

[Jim L]

You got me. I can claim at least one victim of my little jape; my wife. She’s visiting our grandson, Achilles, and I texted her:

It did not go super smoothly, indeed! I’ll wait to see how long it takes for her to catch on. Maybe throw in a few more disasters for good measure…

Did I catch anyone else out there, if only for a moment? I’m looking at you, John.

Edited April 1 by Jim L

[John]

27 minutes ago, Jim L said:

You got me. I can claim at least one victim of my little jape; my wife. She’s visiting our grandson, Achilles, and I texted her:

It did not go super smoothly, indeed! I’ll wait to see how long it takes for her to catch on. Maybe throw in a few more disasters for good measure…

Did I catch anyone else out there, if only for a moment? I’m looking at you, John.

Guilty as charged - I took it at face value because it was posted well before the dawning of the 1st of April here in the UK 🙂

Jon Isaacs on CN certainly seems to be "fully engaged" with the topic ! 😁

Edited April 1 by John

[Jim L]

22 minutes ago, John said:

Guilty as charged - I took it at face value because it was posted well before the dawning of the 1st of April here in the UK 🙂

Jon Isaacs on CN certainly seems to be "fully engaged" with the topic ! 😁

It’s the most fun when you fall for a joke.

Jon is a very smart and experienced observer. I’m a retired farrier with two years of observing under my belt. Jon humors me with his thoughtful and detailed analyses and I return the favor with my wild imaginings. It’s a symbiotic partnership.

[Ratlet]

Jeepers.  I can see some people on CN having a sense of humour prolapse over this 🤣.

I thought it was cracking.  A slow build up to an increasing level of catastrophe.

[Jim L]

5 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

Jeepers.  I can see some people on CN having a sense of humour prolapse over this 🤣.

I thought it was cracking.  A slow build up to an increasing level of catastrophe.

What can be expected? Didn’t you send your puritans over here? And smart of you to do so!

Pre-revenge for the revolution, I suppose. They’re a surly lot, and do not take kindly to fun of any sort. Take them back and let’s let bygones be bygones; we’ll behave, I promise! 😇