5" F/5
Telescope Building Class
During the spring of 2003, I taught a telescope building class through
the university club (UIAS). I precut the wood parts for twelve 5"
F/5 newtonian scopes, ordered optics and focusers, and acquired the
other parts and supplies. Eleven people paid $150 each for the
supplies and assembled their own scope, with my help. This class
was a lot of work for me, but we ended up with 12 completed scopes (1
for the club) that were much better than what you would buy for the
same money.
Here are links to pictures of the class, organized by date, that reside
on the UIAS web site. Pictures of the 8 weeks of the class can be
found at the top of this page.
From this class I learned that it is simply too much work to prefab all
the parts and do all of the ordering myself. From now on,
everyone gets their own supplies. Also, the secondary holders
that I came up with were inexpensive, but very difficult to
adjust. Buying spiders and holders would have cost $60 more
making the scopes $210, but would have been worth it. I've
encouraged the scope owners to make this improvement and offerred help,
but no one has taken me up on the offer.