Scattered Thoughts . . .

I made a little more progress on my homemade telescope mounts this morning.  I decided to drill and tap each of the axes on each of these mounts so I can add a clutch of sorts to each axis.   In this first photo, you can see both locking clutches on the equatorial mount.  I drilled and tapped 1/4-20 holes on the edge of each axis.  I can now add some friction to each axis or I can even lock down an axis.   This next photo shows the three locking clutches on the dual telescope altitude-azimuth mount.  Now I can control how much friction is applied to each of the axes.   Although it appears as though the 1/4-20 locking clutch makes direct contact with the threads on the axis, it does not.  I have some heavy leather inside the hole I drilled so the leather is pressed down on the threads of the axis.  This will protect the threads while applying enough pressure to have a useful clutch.  If we had metal on metal, then the threads would quickly be ground down by the metal on meta

I'm in the process of building a few little (relatively little) things outdoors as the weather and my health allows...  which means, over the course of only a few hours a week...  but at least things are progressing.  I am making some headway so that is good.  One of the things I'm building is a small fenced area in our yard where I can do some astronomy.  Last summer we had too many bears freely roaming around our neighborhood for me to feel safe out there alone in the pitch darkness.  This year, I'm enclosing myself inside a small fenced area that includes a shed.   Rather than constantly lugging a tripod from indoors to the outdoors and then lugging it back indoors again, I decided to build a pier within this fenced area.  I will be able to mount any of my telescope mounts on this pier, electronic or manual, without the use of a heavy-duty tripod.  Having a permanent pier outdoors will give my spinal injuries a little bit of a break.   The pier, itself, is q