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Amateur Telescope Making
This page is dedicated to building, repairing or restoring any kind of telescope. As projects come to light, they will be published here with progressive updates as they are built over time.
I hope this information provides useful and inspirational to anyone who may think that building a precision instrument is too big a task for them. Hopefully, you will see that all this type of work is simply a matter of patience. Skill develops along the journey, while the end result is so much more fulfilling than throwing money at a fast-food, ready-made telescope.
1878 With-Browning Telescope Rebuild.
In 2007, my good friend Ron from antiquescopes.com entrusted to me, a huge task. He had acquired a few very dated and deteriorated pieces of an unidentified telescope. Through much research all over the world, Ron managed to find enough information for us to piece together this historic jigsaw puzzle. Working with letters, archives, e-mails and photographs that Ron has provided me, I have orchestrated all the players to bring this antique beauty back up to an operational standard.
The wonderful thing about this task is that not only were instruments such as this made by hand to be pleasing to the eye, but the techniques used to fabricate and shape these metals have not been used in mainstream fabrication for over a century!
It’s akin to being given a radiator cap and a set of windscreen wipers, then being asked to find out all you know about what type of car they may have belonged to one hundred years ago and to build the parts to complete the car around them. Then, to ensure authenticity, try to keep to the old ways of doing this, working from ink drawings, and measurements scaled from old photographs and known items.
The first step was to try to bring up what we had to a new looking condition, and find any engraving/inscriptions hidden under the corrosion. Next was to ascertain what was genuine, and what items were modern modifications. This telescope has been through a lot of hands.
There were many parts broken that needed replacing and others that were missing altogether. Be it steel, brass or wood, these had to be constructed in turn. Mostly, I used a combination of hand and power tools, with the occasional machining on my uncle’s metal lathe.
Finally, the parts had to be finished, test fitted, polished, painted and assembled.
There is still work to be done to finish this magnificent old instrument. There is cast iron work for the mount, primary mirror housing and the woodwork to finish. The mirrors are intact and re-aluminised. The old surface was silver, but silver tarnishes and had worn very thin indeed.
To see the full story, go to www.antiquescopes.com
Ron has history on this telescope and more like it. So far he has dug up a wealth of information on the last few remaining Browning telescopes of this type. I am very grateful to Ron for entrusting this momentous task to me and hope that others will be inspired to undertake similar projects, not only to preserve the history of these beautiful pieces of craftsmanship, but to preserve the lost skills and techniques that we may very well lose to automation and modern technology.
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