The Low Cost Telescope Project

Okay, here is how this story begins. One morning while leaving my mother's house, my daughter and I found a telescope in someone's yard next to their trash pile. A worn out reflector on a EQ mount, wooden tripod legs. Gears stripped, screw missing, dead bugs inside...been sitting in their garage for years before they finally decided to trash it, I guess. We stuffed all of it in the car and drove off.

Dissassembled. Cleaned what we could. EQ mount was total trash. Legs will be saved for future project. Primary mirror and secondary cleaned with Isopropyl - reagent grade high quality stuff. Telescope tube cleaned with wet sponge. Missing screws replaced. If the screw hole was stripped, just used a bigger screw!

Found plans for a 4.25 inch dobsonian, decided to use the scope tube and the plans I found to convert this one into a small dobsonian for my daughter. Its a .965" focuser, so had to put a request on internet group on yahoo for donated .965" eyepieces that someone might have in their drawers for years and hasn't thrown away. Received a 25mm and 12.5mm. FREE - kinds souls.

Using scrap wood, we built something very close to the plans.

So now we have a ZERO Dollar working small dobsonian.

Time to start spending money.

88 cents at Walmart for furniture sliders, our base curves and circles are the highest quality roundness, so it wobbled a lot side to side when going up and down. The sliders appear to have resolved it by minimizing contact points. Friction still seems good as well as balance.


96 cents at Walmart - flat black spray paint. Need another can, so that will double!

99 cents at 99 cent store - glow in the dark stars and solar system set. Got 9 planets and 11 stars we'll decorate the base with.

So far looks promising to keep it under 5 dollars!