A ballhead mount for a telrad.

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The most convenient place to mount a finder (in my experience) is close to the eyepiece, assuming the telescope has been pointed very close to the object with the use of a telrad or something like that. I like pointing the scope with a telrad without standing on my ladder, so the telrad must be placed low enough , even if the object of interest is high in the sky. This means it will have to be placed on one of the trusses. To accomplish this I made a ballhead mount for my telrad, which can also be used with a not too heavy finder instead of a telrad. It's really very simple.

  • Take a piece of 18 mm thickness scrap baltic birch plywood, or some other piece of wood;
  • drill a hole through the plywood, of the same diameter as the trusstubes;
  • cut the plywood into two parts, lengthwise
  • connect the two pieces with a small hinge;
  • glue a 5-6 mm nut into one of the parts, at the side opposite to the hinge;
  • mount a piece of threaded rod, glued into a knob, to the other part of the plywood, such that the threaded rod can be screwed into the nut;
  • epoxy a camera-bolt into one of the wooden parts at the side of the hinge;
  • glue a camera-nut into a hole, drilled in another piece of (9 mm thickness) plywood, on which the telrad will be mounted;
  • assemble all parts a shown in the pictures and mount the whole assembly to one of the trusses.
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    Email adres: Jan van Gastel