Home-made Bahtinov masks - the ultimate material!!

[Andrew*]

I found the perfect material to cut out bahtinov masks today in Hobbycraft. It's black 0.5mm polypropylene A4 sheets. Dead easy to cut with a craft knife, and stays flat. Only drawback is it won't do bigger than for say 8" scopes in that size.

I printed out a layout from here, glued the paper to the plastic with pritt-stick, spent an hour with the craft knife, then just removed the paper/glue with warm water - job done!

To attach to the scope, two nails (put a layer of tape to prevent any scratching of the paintwork) spaced at 90° or so, and it just rests on the end of the dewshield.

Just saved myself ~£20 on a ready made one

Andrew

[SpookyKatt]

Sounds good, think I'll have to give this a go.

Kathleen

[Andrew*]

Here's a pic. I went for 8mm slot spacing, whereas the original plot showed 4mm spacing - that was too daunting!!

[zhgutas]

Neat! Though I was always wondering, how precise do the cuts have to be? The obvious answer to me would seam to be "very", but I've seen some "not so thoroughly made" (to put in in a nice way) masks that people claim to be working well..

Marius

[steppenwolf]

Though I was always wondering, how precise do the cuts have to be?

Not quite as critical as you you might expect - cut by hand works just fine