Scattered Thoughts . . .

O ther than preparing dinner like I usually do, I accomplished one small task this evening.  As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I designed a telescope mount pier extension and I am in the process of building it.   When I wrote that blog entry, I had just spray painted the parts and was waiting on them to cure.  I waited about 48 hours and then started on the next step. I have six 1/4-20 threaded inserts that need to be inserted into six holes.  I had pre-drilled these holes before painting but I hadn't double checked the depth of the holes...  I simply eye-balled it.  Well...  as luck would have it...  these holes were not deep enough so it was back to the drill press. This evening, I drilled those six holes about a 1/4" deeper.  These inserts fit perfectly now.   The next step will be to drill holes in the 4-1/2" x 12" pipe that is the actual extension.  I have six corresponding holes to drill in that pipe.  I ...

A s usual, whenever my health allows, I tend to be working on a few projects at the same time.  At the moment, I'm working on making a couple of aperture masks for one of my telescopes, I'm doing some landscaping around the house, I'm making some small springtime repairs around the house as I come across them, I'm repairing the grill in our outdoor kitchen, and I'm designing and making a telescope mount pier extension.  This particular blog entry is about the pier extension project thus far.   Quite often, especially if I use one of my longer refractor telescopes but it is not limited to this one telescope, I find myself wishing I had a taller tripod for my telescope mount.  Sometimes, even when sitting on a very low stool, I need to get my butt off the stool and sit on the ground because the eyepiece is closer to the ground than my eye in a sitting position.  If I use my longest refractor telescope, the telescope will even hit the tripod legs when pointing...