Homemade Pier Extension Completed

I finished my homemade telescope pier extension project today and it seems to be working as planned.

There isn't a whole lot in life that is more satisfying than designing something in sketches in a notebook, then building each individual part yourself, then assembling all the parts and finding that everything works just as designed and planned!

My primary problem that prompted this project was that my longer telescopes would hit the tripod legs when viewing almost straight upward.  Also a factor in my decision is that my astronomy tripod isn't tall enough for my longer refractor telescopes which meant I would need to sit down very low on the ground to see into the eyepiece.  I needed a pier extension to raise the mount and telescope higher.  

Some may ask why I don't just extend the legs fully to gain some overall height but this is a bad idea for two reasons.  First, it will do nothing for me to resolve the telescope colliding with the tripod legs.  And next, the more you extend those leg extensions, the more wobbly the whole package gets.  Any amount of even the slightest wobble is a bad thing and especially with long focal length telescopes.  This is why I never extend those leg extensions other than to level out the tripod.  I needed a pier extension.  Extending the legs would only cause additional problems.

This extension would be placed between the tripod and the mount itself raising the mount higher off the ground.  This allows for longer telescopes without the problem of the telescope hitting one of the tripod legs.  This also allows for observing while standing when viewing objects near the horizon and viewing while sitting in a chair if observing objects high in the sky.  It used to be that the end of my longer telescopes was very near the ground when viewing near the zenith which would put me on the ground crouching as low as my extensive spinal injuries would allow in order to peer into the eyepiece.  I needed a pier extension to resolve these issues.

My original plan was to simply purchase a manufactured pier extension that fits my particular tripod and mount.  Unfortunately, no manufacturer makes one for my particular mount(s) so I came up with a few different designs for this project once I realized I would not be able to purchase one to fit my needs.  I quickly decided on one design and spent a little time refining all the connections, sizes and ensuring the most functionality.  I decided to use a 12 inch long, four inch diameter PVC pipe with Poplar hardwood for the ends of the extension.  I felt the usual manufactured sizes of 8 inches would be too short and 16 inches would be too tall so I settled for 12 inches.

These Poplar hardwood ends required accurate measuring so all the parts would fit together perfectly with each other as well as with the tripod and my mount(s).  The bottom plate would need to mate perfectly with the top of my tripod.  The top plate of the extension would need to mate perfectly with the bottom of my mount.  Both of these ends would need to allow a long running threaded rod to run up through the center of the PVC pipe and into the bottom of my mount head securing it in place.  Since these end plates needed to be accurate, I spent some extra time refining this design and measuring over and over to ensure all was correct and accurate.  (I often have difficulty focusing and struggle with 'brain fog' due to my mast cell disease so I have learned to triple and quadruple check my work especially when dealing with the math required for making precision parts.)

After drawing accurate templates, a good jigsaw and a drill press made most of this work pretty straightforward.  I just focused on each piece, one at a time and took my time.  I used the drill press as a drum sander too.  Between my belt sander and a sanding drum on my drill press, I had all the sanding covered.  

I mounted the end plates to the PVC pipe by using 1/4-20 stainless flat head screws screwed into threaded inserts that I had drilled and mounted in my hardwood plates, top and bottom.  This worked out well.  The flathead screws were fitted with appropriate countersunk finish washers.  Between the finish washer and the PVC pipe, I also placed rubber washers so the finish washers would sit better on the curved sidewall of this 4 inch diameter pipe.  The difficult part here was ensuring the holes in the large pipe were spaced at exactly 120° and lined up with the threaded inserts on the top and bottom plates which were also at 120° radials.  I drew a template with radials spaced at 120° increments to use as a guide.  

Once all the individual parts were cut and sanded, it was time for painting.  Everything was hit with four coats of gloss white spray paint over two days and then allowed to cure for another two days.  My tripod is white so I chose white as the color for this pier extension.  On a sidenote, freshly spray-painted parts seem to be magnets for flying bugs.  I was constantly removing stuck-on flying insects!

After the paint had cured for 48 hours, I then started drilling holes in the hardwood parts to assemble the individual parts into a whole unit.  This task was a bit tedious but I just focused on adding one part at a time and that seemed to make this go more quickly.  This also allowed me to keep my focus where it needed to be.  I didn't need to be distracted by biting off more than I could chew.  I stayed focused on one step at a time.

Now I had an assembled pier extension that fit on top of my tripod but I still needed a long threaded rod to run through this extension and into my mount to connect and secure everything together.  My mounts (Explore Scientific) use an M10 threaded rod.  I decided to thread an M10 coupler onto the top of the stock threaded rod that came with my mount and tripod.  I would then insert another M10 threaded rod into the coupler.  This additional threaded rod would run up through my pier extension and into the bottom of my mount.  Now I needed to cut the threaded rod to the exact length needed for my particular needs.  This threaded rod pulls the mount head firmly down onto the tripod in compression.  When secured in compression with the threaded rod, the telescope and telescope mount are firmly mounted onto the top of the tripod.

In order to get the correct length needed for this threaded rod, I took a few measurements.  I found that the height of my homemade pier extension, in total, is 13.5 inches.  I added an eighth of an inch just in case I needed a hair more length.  If necessary, I could always grind off that extra 1/8th of an inch.  However, if I cut it too short, I would waste threaded rod and need to start over.  This length turned out to be perfect in my situation so I left the rod 1/8 inch long.

Now it was time to assemble everything fully and test it.  It was a clear sunny day so I would test it with some brief solar observing of sunspots, faculae and granulation with my relatively big Celestron Omni XLT 120mm refractor.  This refractor has a focal length of 1000mm so it is a rather long optical tube.  At 120mm in diameter, it is also heavier than my other refractors so this would be a good test.  The longer the focal length of the telescope, the steadier the mount needs to be.  The heavier the telescope, the steadier the mount needs to be.  

After mounting the telescope on my mount which was sitting atop this new pier extension, I could clearly see that the telescope was nowhere near the tripod legs anymore.  There would be no threats of a collision with a tripod leg now.  This is good!  This extra height will allow me to use even longer telescopes in the future if I decide to go that route.

I added a solar filter to the front element of the telescope, a solar finder scope, a diagonal, and an eyepiece.  I balanced the telescope.  Now it was time to find the sun.  Once I found the sun, then I adjusted my solar finder scope so I would have no problems finding the sun again.  It can be surprisingly difficult to find the bright sun in a telescope!  Now the telescope was ready for observing.

My views were steady and stable which means this project is a success.  I viewed the sun with my Baader Morpheus 6.5mm eyepiece which gave me 150x magnification with this telescope.  That is a pretty good magnification providing a narrow view and things were still steady and stable.  I'd say this project is a success!

Everything seemed to be working as designed so that was a relief and it made me quite happy.  It looks very nice which is also good!  Most importantly, I didn't need to make any alterations to my tripod so I can still use my tripod as it was originally intended by the manufacturer by simply removing the homebuilt pier extension and that is also a very good thing!

This was a nice little project which, I'm sure, will prove to have been a very useful project.