Roger's Optics and Restoration

Roger's Optics and Restoration Even though I have now retired, if you have any questions, feel free to message me.

Repairs and restoration of optical equipment, binoculars, telescopes, microscopes, magnifiers etc.

I was getting tired of taking off the vice and putting on the rotary table. Due to the offset grooves in the rotary tabl...
01/06/2026

I was getting tired of taking off the vice and putting on the rotary table. Due to the offset grooves in the rotary table I had to mount it at an angle so that I could clamp it securely. Then I had an “epiphany”: make a mounting plate to fit under the rotary table. All well and good, but the only usable piece of steel plate I had was too small, then another “epiphany”. 😁 make two clamps that would extend under the bottom of the rotary table to the mounting plate.
After a couple of hours fuffing around the job is done and I can mount both the rotary table and the vice at the same time. I never have to do large parts so this works fine. If I have to work on a larger part, I’ll remove the two and clamp directly to the mill table. Happy Jan! Images show one of the clamps, two images, to allow for parallax, of the two offset mounting grooves on the rotary table and the two mounted on the mill at both end of the table travel (with still a bit more travel left).

So I require two spirit levels for this build. They have to be 5mm in length to fit correctly. The hardest part was deci...
22/05/2026

So I require two spirit levels for this build. They have to be 5mm in length to fit correctly. The hardest part was deciding if I should go the whole hog and use 3mm glass tubing and mineral oil, or if I should just fake it. Common sense led me to the decision to fake it. So some clear heat shrink tube over a dress makers pin made the capsule and a couple of hours figuring out and creating the brass surrounding parts led to this. Now to replicate it.

So some more progress. The tripod riser and its base plate are now dimensioned as best as possible from the scrap I am w...
17/05/2026

So some more progress. The tripod riser and its base plate are now dimensioned as best as possible from the scrap I am working from! The base plate was milled circular on my rotary table, bolted to a sacrificial aluminium plate. The only flat stock I had was 0.2mm too narrow (you can see a small dark patch on the edge), but I figure I will buff that out with 1000 wet & dry. The taper on the riser is 2.63° which I set up trigonometrically from the DRO. That was much easier than guesstimating from the cross slide protractor which has 5° increments. A 6mm stud holds the parts together. The cut out in the base plate was milled with a 2mm slot cutter, first time I had used it so I took it nice and easy! 😳 Holes and slots for the azimuth securing bolts and the fine adjust are yet to be drilled once my nerves settle down.

Now that the “milestone” (millstone) birthday is out of the way, the gardening and mowing done, I had a couple of hours ...
10/05/2026

Now that the “milestone” (millstone) birthday is out of the way, the gardening and mowing done, I had a couple of hours to do some work on the model refractor build. The recesses were milled into the legs that will enable the legs to be closed and the RA axis parts soldered together and cleaned. A few more minor things need to be done before I can assemble the RA & DEC parts together. So far so good.

Felt a touch/tad/slightly better this arvo so I cut out the legs to approximate size. They now require some sanding to s...
20/04/2026

Felt a touch/tad/slightly better this arvo so I cut out the legs to approximate size. They now require some sanding to size, a small block placed between the two parts of the leg and mounting holes drilled. Hard timber as well, the Japanese pull saw did a great job.

Moving down to the tripod, the top mounting plate had to be made to determine what dimensions will be needed for the bas...
14/04/2026

Moving down to the tripod, the top mounting plate had to be made to determine what dimensions will be needed for the base of the EQ mount. So there just happened to be an old fitting that had a hex bolt machined onto it. A bit of setting up on the mill to allow three lugs to be machined was required. The shape was roughed out and then the lugs finally brought them down to their 10mm final width. Next I have to drill six holes and tap them for 8BA to take the leg bolts, but that’ll have to wait until I stop sneezing due to a bad chest cold.

Further to yesterday’s post, I found an image of the original star diagonal parts, what it looked like completed and wha...
02/04/2026

Further to yesterday’s post, I found an image of the original star diagonal parts, what it looked like completed and what I made to replace it. The base of the old one is what was used, middle of the image.

What do you do when the scrap bin doesn’t have a lump of brass the right size? You improvise. Needed a block that could ...
02/04/2026

What do you do when the scrap bin doesn’t have a lump of brass the right size? You improvise. Needed a block that could provide me with the dimensions 22.5x22.5x15mm. Found an old brass plate that I had originally milled up as a support back for a 90° star diagonal, so it had a recess milled into it (sorry didn’t take an image of it) measuring 50x9x23mm. I cut it in half, drilled and tapped a couple of holes for registration, then silver soldered the two halves together. This is now where that temperamental boring head came into play. The RA housing is a stepped cylinder so the block had to be milled to fit. The boring bar was used offset from the edge at the smallest radius first, then increased to the slightly larger radius last, hoping for a good fit. 🤔 The cobbled up block already had some “damage” from knocking about in the scrap bin that couldn’t be removed otherwise I’d lose too much of the required dimension. Still all in all happy with the final result, albeit with a slightly visible “chunk” along the mating edge. The dial indicator shows the readings at both ends of the smaller cylinder of the RA housing. Here’s a couple of pictures to save a few thousand words.

Post of the remaining images.
26/03/2026

Post of the remaining images.

26/03/2026

Have you ever wondered about the “quality” of Chinese made tools? I decided to purchase a boring head for my mill. There were umpteen ads for the exact same head, so I chose the cheapest option (after all I do have Scottish blood in me) for $34. I know you’ll say that I got what I paid for. But this is me doing the warning video for those who may contemplate buying one! Firstly it arrived a day late, meh, so it goes. Came in a square plastic bolt case and covered in the usual Chinese oil (not good enough to save, even with the current oil prices). First impression was it looks okay. Now for the test results. The tension bolts on the ways were super tight, loosening them showed why. The slop along the ways is around 1mm, the tension screws were minimizing the error. The main thread is 0.5mm pitch, so pretty fine with the scale supposedly giving 0.01mm divisional accuracy. The hysteresis in this is 0.32mm! So ensure you only rotate in the one direction! Hang on… update, even locking up the lock screw taking a cut and then releasing the lock, the hysteresis is enough even in the same rotational direction to give you errors! In the video in this post, you can see how much up, down and side to side slip there is and in the other images on the second post, the extent of the hysteresis reading on the dial. I’m off to find one that’s a lot better than this!

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Sydney, NSW
2211

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