Small Maintenance Tasks

I'm still feeling rather lousy and coughing whenever I move so I'm laying low at home.  This morning, however, I accomplished a few small maintenance tasks on my astronomy gear.  

First, I wanted to install a better saddle on my newly converted EXOS2 manual mount (photo at right).  I don't care for saddles with a single bolt holding my telescope on the mount.  I prefer two pressure clamps holding my telescopes.  I had ordered an appropriate saddle a few weeks ago and it arrived this past week.  I just needed to drill a hole and then assemble it so that was a small and easy task that proved to be unremarkable. 

Then I moved to my best telescope.  My Explore Scientific 102mm APO refractor recently developed a sticky focuser.  It wasn't sticking to a complete stop but it was not as smooth as I like it.  Any bit of stickiness in the focuser causes some vibration in your view so I new I wanted to resolve this little problem before I got worse. 

This task was a little more involved than the first one.  I needed to disassemble the focuser and then clean off all the sticky, gunky factory grease.  This was a bit of a messy job.  

I first tried using denatured alcohol but that didn't work.  Then I tried some of Sheila's nail polish remover but all she had on hand was some acetone-free stuff...  that didn't work either.  While looking for a bottle of Goo-Gone (which I know we have somewhere in the house... oh wait...  I think I know where it is now...  hmmm... too late since I already used something else), I found a spray bottle of adhesive remover that I had purchased to restore an old medium format film camera.  I had to remove the old bellows from that 70 year old camera the adhesive remover did the trick.  Now, I was going to use this stinky stuff to remove some old sticky, gunky grease off my rack and pinion focuser.  

I used some Q-tips and carefully removed as much of the old grease as I could.  That old grease is nasty...  thick...  extremely sticky...  and stubborn.  I got most of it but I know there is still some residue left behind because the parts didn't clean up as fully as they should have.  I did remove about 98% of all the old sticky grease though and that proved to be enough.  

I then applied some Super Lube to the rack and pinion focuser gears and reassembled the focuser.  This focuser now operates very smoooothly.  It was a pretty easy job but a bit messy and that adhesive remover really smells.  

So, although I am mostly sedentary today (and this past week), I did manage to accomplish two small tasks this morning.