Roger's Optics and Restoration in Padstow, New South Wales, Australia | Local business
Roger's Optics and Restoration
Locality: Padstow, New South Wales, Australia
Phone: +61 425 709 508
Address: PO Box 224 2211 Padstow, NSW, Australia
Website: http://rogersopticsrestoration.com.au
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24.01.2022 PLEASE NOTE THAT I WILL BE CLOSED NEXT MONDAY AND TUESDAY THE 12TH & 13TH OF OCTOBER.
24.01.2022 Many, many, many, moons ago I made a 13.3" f/4.5 mirror. Many of you know that I have been threatening to make a Dobsonian with it for the last 15 years or so... Hmm, finally progress!! I made the secondary holder over the last few days. It has orthogonal collimation. That means only two collimation bolts to achieve collimation! Yup, two. In the gap between the mirror holder and the hub there is a 6 mm stainless steel ball bearing and a high tensile spring. The ball be...aring and the collimation bolts form a right angle and the spring is anchored between the ball bearing and the centre of the aluminium disc. This means that when you move a collimation screw the mirror holder pivots along the axis formed by tip of the other collimation screw and the ball bearing. So it makes collimation so much easier. I am going to upscale this same idea for the primary mirror using a 20 mm stainless ball bearing. See more
23.01.2022 So I couldnt wait until tomorrow already... I spent a while out in the workshop putting this together as I just had to see how it looked. (Plus I have an appointment tomorrow that means I wouldnt have had enough time to work on it.) So here you go, the finished telescope. (And yes Steve, I left the dings in!)
22.01.2022 Week upon week of binocular repairs. Ho Hum.... Every now and then one comes in that gives you a bit more of a challenge! This time a Swarovski 10X42WB which required extensive cleaning and a broken twist up eyecup to be repaired. A new one is on order, but the owner decided he wanted it in a hurry so a modification to the broken parts was in order. After the removal of a few years of facial oils, sand, grit, nasal hairs (yuk), grass seeds and the cleaning of the body an...d external optics, I investigated how to achieve a working eyecup. Measuring the broken glide I found that an 11BA threaded hole would be achievable without weakening the plastic too much. So the 1.2mm hole was drilled into the broken glide and then tapped for the 11BA bolt. The hole on the outer collar was 2.6mm, but the bolt head 3mm, so the hole was enlarged to 3.1mm to take the bolt head. Once it was all put together I once more had a working twist up eyecup and an excellent working binocular. See more
21.01.2022 At the end of the day the 120mm is back together again. A couple of minor adjustments to make before I collimate it, but essentially its almost done. First viewing through it (one eye at a time) was up the road a bit where it achieves closest focus! A very bright image with very little appreciable distortion except for at the very edge of field. Collimation tomorrow. Heres a couple of images for you.
21.01.2022 ... and a few more normal sized binoculars serviced and repaired. However, I did spend time doing a few more things to the restoration pair. The tripod legs were stripped back, primed and lightly taken back with 240 wet and dry, one was finished the other two are in "transition". I also managed to clean back the left hand prism cover and get it primed and painted. The Japanese character is still visible and yet to be filled in.
21.01.2022 A new year and new patients! This time a Ross refractor that has seen worse for wear. It took ages to remove the front sun shield and then some brute force and panel beating to bring it back to true. The visible brass was originally nickel plated and would have looked a treat straight off the production line, but over the years the nickel has become dull and yellowed and in need of a clean. Being applied through a plating process, the nickel is thin and you have to be careful when cleaning it so as not to remove it! The tripod was also not operational with one leg separated from the head and having to be made good before being able to be refitted with new screws, as the old ones were missing. I did a restoration of the polish on the removed leg as well. So heres a couple of shots of the on-going operation.
20.01.2022 Well the past month has seen a few things happen. One week written off due to injury when the hacksaw decided to shed a few teeth and bounce onto my thumb. Heres a few images of what has come and gone.
20.01.2022 Just a quick post. A quiet Sunday morning so I heated the centre lens from the 120mm binocular, split it, cleaned it and then recemented it. Tomorrow will be the first day of reassembly for the entire binocular. Now for some gardening!
20.01.2022 In yesterdays post, Steve Mencinsky brought up the question "a triplet in an Opera Glass?" It so happens that today I am working on another opera glass where the balsam had been shocked in a drop and the lenses were separating. I have heated, separated them and cleaned them ready for reglueing with balsam. Heres a picture of the separated and cleaned lenses with the dioptre readings of each of the surfaces.
17.01.2022 So, Astroscan, hmm... What is fun about pulling one of these apart is there is only one way in! Remove the front window and work your way down. Heres a few shots of one that I worked on. The problem that was evident was lots of little black granules all over the mirrors and the front window. Where were they coming from? The answer lay behind the primary mirror, high density foam reaching the end of its useful life. The specs can be seen written on the back of the mirror. The original foam was replaced with more high density foam, hopefully to last at least as long as the original.
17.01.2022 And now for something completely different. Restoration means being able to multitask and bend your abilities to other jobs. I have a family clock that needed restoration of the face. The mechanical side of things I had already taken care of, but the porcelain face had been damaged. So I undertook the stripping back of the stuck on paper numbers and paint to the bare metal. I then filled in the missing areas with Spakfilla and smoothed it back to roughly the same shape as the rest of the curved face. Then a few coats of white paint (very hard to match the white porcelain colour) each taken back with wet and dry as far as 1500, then the numbers were put on with a fine line marker pen. Measuring them was a hassle, but it was worth it in the end. So heres some images of the process.
16.01.2022 Over these last few months (!) I have had an opportunity to finally do the things that I wanted to do to my brass refractor. It is made by Davis of Cheltenham circa 1842 and when I purchased it in 2014 the original tripod was no longer with it, but it did have the wooden case, the alt-az mount, 4 astronomical eyepieces and one terrestrial eyepiece. So my first task was to create the tripod. I made it out of Tasmanian Oak and stained it, basing the design on a Watson tripod. ... At first I only had a brass chain to restrict the spread of the tripod legs and had been meaning to make the central hub for for the last four years! Back in February I finally got the time to make it. The pivots were made of brass parts from old document folders that I had hoarded for years in the hope that maybe one day they would come in handy. I used the same stain as on the tripod legs. The other thing that bugged me was the bad case of astronomers neck when having to bend in half to look at anything above 50 elevation. So off to the scrap brass bin to see what I could find. I would have loved to have made one resembling the original design of the day, but I didn't have any brass tube anywhere near the diameter required. So I compromised a bit and made a brass version of the modern star diagonal. I had a rectangular piece of brass that was 10mm thick which I used for the base, doing a very rough milling of a recess to fit the prism I had selected from my spare prism drawer. The eyepiece holder was fun to make as once more my scrap bin didn't have a brass tube with enough thickness to put the 1 1/4" RSA thread into, so I compromised and turned one up out of delrin which I then fitted inside the brass tube. The mating thread to fit the extension tube on the telescope I made from three small thick walled tubes that I turned up to fit inside each other, then silver soldered them together. I was looking for some flat thin brass plate to make the sides up from and wasn't sure where to get the quantity that I needed. Coincidentally I put up an new "No Junk Mail" sign on our letterbox and the old one I noticed was made of thin brass plate, so a Bunnings trip was in order. I bought four more signs to make the sides up from. Fortuitously the plates were almost the same width as the base plate I had just machined up. :-) So after a bit of measuring, the mounting holes were drilled, the holes for the eyepiece holder and extension tube mount were drilled with a step drill and the whole thing assembled. It really is only a temporary solution so I was not overly concerned with appearances as long as it worked! I keep looking for a star diagonal from the same era. See more
15.01.2022 A few weeks filled with a few mundane repairs, but a couple that I could get my teeth stuck into. A C11 that was left under an open dome, a Meade 10" ACF left alone for 10 years and a 20X130 which is the subject of the attached images. The problems associated with these? 1. Sheared bolt heads. 2. Bolt holes filled with bog and painted over. 3. Retaining rings loosened and tightened using a screwdriver and a hammer. 4. Drilling out aforementioned sheared bolts with a 2.1mm... drill bit. 5. Finding blue tack in strange places. 6. The front objective housing warped by 0.5 mm which is making it hard to remove the objective cell. etc. etc. etc. Next is to figure out how I am going to remove the damaged retaining ring as the use of the hammer and screwdriver has embedded the damaged portion of the ring into the dew shield. Now you know why I love doing this!! :-) See more
15.01.2022 A couple of days building my own things. I have been meaning to build my 13" f/4.5 dob for over 15 years, I mean I finished the mirror back then, but never got around to making the scope... Seems other things kept cropping up. Anyway I am making an ultralight dob and needed to have a really light focuser so as not to throw out the balance, A hunt through various parts boxes gave me a few things to work on. One was the lower condenser stage from an old microscope and it w...as made of aluminium, not brass. The same box gave me a microscope rack sub assembly and my new parts box a rack to match. A 2" short focus extension tube that Ive not had to use brought itself to my attention as well. I machined the hole on the condenser stage to 1.8" (not quite 2" but I can live with it). Then I fabricated a collar which on one end slid into the 1.8" hole and on the other I machined a 0.75 mm pitch 2" filter thread to fit the extension tube to. A couple of grub screws hold the collar to the condenser stage. A bit of milling to an aluminium plate produced the adapting plate that will be bolted to the single top ring of the scope. Quite happy as the total weight is 282 g, which is less than those available commercially. Now for the rest of the scope!! See more
15.01.2022 I will be out of action for 3 weeks as of Monday. Back to work around the 12th of November, I hope...
15.01.2022 Hey All!! I will be unavailable between the 24th & 30th of May inclusive.
14.01.2022 After another hour, the flint element is finally released! Hope I never see one like this again. At least I have the new cell ready to go. Just have to clean both lens elements... whew...
14.01.2022 ...and moving right along with this restoration. The altitude axis has now been completed and has come up quite nicely. I started with the first eyepiece knowing that it would be a real beast to get apart I gave it a morning of mucking about to release the hardened grease and gunge. The grease turned out to be a combination of greases and was hard to chip off! My main concern was the exit lens of the eyepiece. I cleaned off a few years worth of dirt, dust, fly specks and pa...int to find that the surface was very badly scratched and would not work too well as a lens anymore. Searching through my lens collection I came up with two doublet lenses with the same focal length (42 mm) and what I hoped was the same diameter (19.7 mm). I rolled out the brass rim that retained the eyepiece lens and popped the old lens out, that was a 15 minute procedure. Then I could check its diameter against the two lenses I had in stock. How lucky can you get with the new ones being 19.65 mm in diameter!! I fitted the first lens and rolled the rim back into place. Next post I will hopefully be able to show you one eyepiece completed! See more
14.01.2022 Thought I would write on a subject that comes up frequently. "How much is my telescope worth?" Well, thats good question. The market is flooded nowadays with copies of large and small brass telescopes, theodolites, compasses, sextants and magnifiers all made in India in the last couple of decades. They sell variously from as little as $12 to $300 on eBay and other similar sites. I am presuming that the production of these in such great quantities was to slake the thirst o...f those who required a "brass telescope" to put on display in their new modern house for purely aesthetic reasons (and it would have to be aesthetics as the image is usually deplorable). For those of us who have a minor interest in the real deal, we can ignore these pretenders as we know the names of the major instrument makers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Broadhurst, Clarkson, Dollond, Cooke, Troughton, Simms, Short, Merz, Clark, Secrtan, Ramsden, Grubb are some, heck I have a book on them which has a few hundred listed makers from that period! The problem arises when that question above is posed to those who have no idea of what they have. The owner of the Ross that I just restored thought that it was worth between $200 - $300 as he had seen some on the web "just like it". (Insert here the sound of me smacking my hand against my forehead.) Whereas the truth is that he should be at least doubling that figure and adding a zero to it! The irony of all of this is that I have customers who come to me with these Indian copies asking me to "make the image better" (Repeat above sound effect.) See more
13.01.2022 Always something coming in to keep me occupied. This time it's a Dollond (George, but Dollond by name change go Google!) Lovely scope but with a few problems with it as well as the case. Some careful brass cleaning for a conservator finish, some woodwork to show that woodwork has been done (had to fill three drill holes in the bottom panel and make a piece to fit where some timber had been broken off), had to drill out two steel screws for the hinges (rusted through), replace the screws with brass ones, repair the lock, and clean and polish the timber. Not a bad result.
13.01.2022 Most of the way through the restoration of the 6" f/10 reflector. It has taken some work and a lot of wet and dry to get to this point. Some parts have been completed and sealed and others are still works in progress. You can see in these images how things are going. The hinges and their bolts have been cleaned up to an "aesthetic" condition, where some signs of age still show. The bolt slots will be cleaned out before they are fitted. The focuser has come up nicely, even with the solder that holds the back plate on. The eyepiece is a microscope eyepiece with a crude crosshair fitted.
13.01.2022 Another week another few repairs and this one restoration that I thought I would share. This Ross binocular were damaged in the floods in Townsville back in February this year and due to sentimental reasons the owner wished them restored. As can be seen they were in fairly bad condition and all prisms were mould affected. The outer body was oxidising and needed to be taken back to bare aluminium and stabilised before the new leather (kangaroo hide) was glued on. The best wa...y of getting a pattern for the leather is to use shelf protective contact which can be first stuck to the body, cut whilst in situ then removed and stuck to the leather. Then cutting around the pattern through the leather gives you the exact shape you need. The ducks are cute though... All of the optics were cleaned ultrasonically and once prism needed to be flashed polished on two of its faces due to stubborn mould. There were still obvious marks lefts from where the mould had etched the glass, but thems the breaks! The internal body was cleaned and swabbed with a mould inhibitor before everything was reassembled. I took 175 images, but I will only bore you with a few of them. See more
10.01.2022 Okay, so sometimes life isn't all telescopes and binoculars, other things come up that also need restoration as requested by the other half. We have a wall hanging which is an Chinese ancestor scroll of the Shunzhi Emperor Fu Lin of the Qing Dynasty (1592-1643). It was torn at the edge near the dowel hanging support due to a gust of wind and it needed to be repaired. Conservation techniques for this couldn't be used due to the extensive rip, so the decision was made to cut... the damaged portion off and reuse the dowel and glue it all back together. It was important not to lose any of the markings that had been made on the original portion of the scroll that wrapped around the dowel, so this was carefully removed using a 3 thou feeler gauge to separate the material from the wood. This was trimmed to be glued back on after the dowel was refitted. The original hooks were fine wire that were bent around the dowel prior to the material being glued on, but I made a decision to replace them with small brass eyehooks. The edges were already reinforced with a coarse linen weave cloth which made handling a lot easier. A pH neutral glue had to be used, PVA glue is pH neutral so a small amount was diluted to form a runny glue that would dry relatively quickly. I could have gone the whole gamut and made a rice glue, but using PVA glue gives me another meal! The pictures show the progression through the procedure and the final finished hanging. See more
09.01.2022 This is a good reason not to always throw things away. I had a binocular come in which had been dropped, not obvious at first as the front crush rim was a rubber one which hid the evidence and, like an elastic band, kept everything in place. It wasnt until the rubber was removed that the "Oh S**t!" moment occurred. Thankfully I had a few old objective extension housings tucked away and one had the same mounting thread as the broken one. What it didnt have was the ability ...to take an eccentric collimating lens cell. So onto the lathe and a bit of a boring time and a bit of threading and I had a "new" housing to fit to the binocular. The thing is that this binocular would have come out of Japan around 1969, long before man set foot on the Moon, but obviously after man had left many fingerprints on its lenses. I finished the strip down and rebuild this afternoon, nice optics in this pair. Going by the J number of JB-250 it was made by Fujimora Optical. See more
09.01.2022 So the week progressed with more binoculars of a general nature and then there was the highlight of the week. A lovely pair of Emil Busch opera glasses. The lenses were filthy internally and the leather and enameled surfaces dull. It turned out that the enameled surfaces were too far oxidised to bring back to a reasonable gloss, so they were just cleaned and coated with Renaissance Wax. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, the objectives are ovoid! The construction of the re...taining system for the objectives, using grub screws, was fine. It was just that the leather was fitted AFTER the grub screws were so without damaging the leather the lenses could not be removed. They were cleaned in situ. What I found to be a lovely collimation system was that the eyepiece was mounted in an eccentric ring. Looking through the opera glass, the eyepieces would have been rotated until one image was achieved and then they peined the edge to maintain the eyepiece position. Other than that I managed to complete the reassembly of the tripod for the 130mm binoculars Ive been working on. It has come up really nicely everything works and the modification I made to keep the legs in place works really well. See more
09.01.2022 I had a lovely little opera glass come in for a bit of TLC a few weeks ago. It was a bit of a challenge due to its condition, but patience paid off and I finished it this morning. The leather was in poor condition and the gilt framing was quite dirty and worn off in places where ones hands normally hold it. The leather was also falling off and needed to be glued back into place. The internal felt had come loose and under it I found an advertisement from a French newspaper for clothing. There are tiny red cut glass "rubies" inserted into the leather on the top surface. The focusing wheel was missing so I had to turn up a new one from Bakelite and fit it. The optics are in good condition and after a clean the image was quite nice at 2X magnification.
08.01.2022 Well the final touches have been made to the 6" f/10 that I have been working on. It has come up reasonably well, I just have to accept the fact that 85 years does leave some dings and scratches that cannot be disguised, but at least it shows the history of use! I had to remodel the secondary holder due to a "modern" aluminium one being fitted in around the mid 1960s had decided that it would crack and break as I removed it from the spider. Now a new brass backing plate has been fitted and the aluminium bits and pieces consigned to the bin. This scope was made by Ken Beames back in 1934 and the mirror in 1933. It may now bear some resemblance to when it was first made once again. This scope will not be used, but placed on display by the owners.
07.01.2022 The usual repairs have been coming in, but nothing worthwhile reporting about until now. I had a 102mm Polarex refractor come in for a bit of TLC. The accessories were rolling around in the box protected by the original timber shavings wrapped up in brown paper. That was okay 40 odd years ago, but not now. There was ample room to make some modifications to the case. I made a new holder for the counterweight and the spare shaft, a pad to place the Sun projection screen ont...o and a modification to the lid to capture the top of the finderscope and secure it during transport. Since it had only 0.965" eyepieces and focuser, I removed the original eyepiece holder and machined up a new 1.25" holder so that the owner can use more modern eyepieces. The objective was also removed for cleaning. The cell is collimated by three screws on heavy duty springs that are captive within a machined recess. The objective is held in the cell by a ring which has retaining and locking screws so that the lenses are not held too tightly. This made for a couple of days interesting work interspersed with a microscope and a couple of binoculars... See more
07.01.2022 A sweet little pair of opera glasses (C. 1920) that came in for some tlc. The brass had shed its coat of varnish and the objective lenses were growing funny stuff. 5 hours later they looked like this. Cleaned back and sealed with a microcrystalline wax.
07.01.2022 Today the 120mm binoculars started on their way to being complete. Even with the cleaning, chasing & lubricating of the 0.5mm pitch threads, the left cowling took 45 minutes to screw it back on. Tomorrow I will be tapping 12 holes for new securing bolts for the bridging cover. I had to drill out eight broken bolts before painting the body, the tap size will depend upon what countersunk bolts I have in quantity, 6BA or 3mm. Heres how they look so far.
06.01.2022 Again delays due to 400mm of rainfall, some of which flooded across my workshop floor. I needed to replace some cabinets and shelves and did a rearranging of things whilst I was at it. Then I had to catch up with normal repairs & collimation of binoculars before i could get back to the 130mm restoration. I found two paper wasp nests inside of the tubes that hold the nuts for the legs, they were pretty old and solid and took a bit of chipping out. The body and some parts have now been resprayed and clear coated. There is an image showing the parts of the tripod head which were prime etched prior to being painted along with the finished body for comparison. I had to strip back the legs as they were so badly damaged (photos in next post). Still a bit to go and I dont expect to finish until mid April.
05.01.2022 Now heres a test of patience. Theres an objective in a cell, there is an unknown glue that has been injected into the edge to hold the lens and the retaining ring in place. How do you remove the retaining ring? Well, you start with a one and one half thousands of an inch feeler guage and a bit of acetone and you work your way around the retaining ring. After about 45 minutes, the glue (see images) starts to soften enough that you can remove the retaining ring. Now, due to... the way that the glue has been injected in through small holes in the side of the cell, the crown and flint have also copped a dose of "glue". At least now you can work your way up to a 4 thousands of an inch feeler guage and more acetone to get between the lens and the cell. I have a feeling that the image may have shown some astigmatism due to this gluing. Finally, after another hour of gentle probing with the 4 thou guage and acetone the crown lens can be removed, whew!! Then another 30 minutes and the spacer ring can be removed. That brought me to the end of the day. Tomorrow I will tackle the flint lens!! See more
05.01.2022 An interesting day yesterday. I decided that it was time to pull apart the right hand eyepiece for the restoration of the 130mm binocular. Unlike the left hand eyepiece, which retained some movement, the right hand one was frozen solid. Squirting a mixture of WD40 and Penetrene into the 12BA holes after the screws were removed and warming and repeating that about 5 times over 45 minutes as well as warming with a heat gun, some movement was finally detected. By then my thumb...s were killing me, even though I was using a rubber wrench (like an oil filter wrench) to rotate the internal eyepiece cell. The grease that was in the lubricant channels was like a rubber band that had been left out in the Sun for too long, and it came out in small strips. Once I had removed the eyepiece cell, the lenses were removed for a thorough clean. The rear of the field lens has an oily residue in the middle which will be interesting to see if it comes off. After chiseling out the old grease, the cell was then put into a kerosene bath which was then treated to 30 minutes in the ultrasonic tank. Even after this it wasnt totally clean, so out with the elbow grease a nylon brush and more kerosene. Next time Ill see if paint stripper works better. Today I am working on the tripod, I have to make some inserts from delrin as the method of clamping the legs into place is totally inadequate. There is an image of the first one which proved to work really well. See more
05.01.2022 The last week has seen me doing a variety of work. The big binos have had some more painting done, images next time. Today I finished the 117mm refractor that originally had a non-collimatable cell and a short focuser, which meant that a star diagonal always had to be used. The last few hours on it have been painting the cell, fitting the objective lens, making three small blocks to be mounted to the side of the tube for collimation purposes (I couldnt find a short length of 130mm aluminium bar, it would have been way to expensive anyway). Then late this afternoon, I aligned the mechanical and optical axes and collimated the objective. Heres a couple of images of the finished objective cell. Tomorrow is another day...
04.01.2022 Further to my post of December 12th about the "new patients", I have managed to clean up as best as possible the small brass refractor. As of yesterday it is ready for a protective coating of shellac. Heres a pre-coating image for you. Compare the condition as it was to now! I normally wouldnt be so drastic as I have with this scope. I had the opportunity to bring a derelict back to some former brilliance. I will post an image next week of the assembled telescope.
04.01.2022 A Ross restoration update: Finished That was a fun restoration. The hardest part was making the front shield round again. It was a reasonably tight tolerance due to the front brass cell being exactly 80 mm OD and 35 mm wide. I had to turn up firstly a wooden plug that could be hammered down the inside to roughly get it to the correct diameter, then I turned up an aluminium cylinder to exactly 79.9 mm which I inserted into the front of the shield and used it to panel be...at to the correct inside diameter. This took a couple of hours to do and I finished off with a fine wet and dry (200) to clean the inside of the shield. The thread on the shield had been damaged over the last hundred years or so and although I hand chased out the thread (28 tpi) after the third attempt, I could not get the shield to screw all the way back down onto its retaining ring. The leather has been glued back down with a thick shellac and the stitching tightened slightly. The tripod came up well, there was some damage to two of the legs where screws had been pulled out. The original screws were of several different types, brass and steel and of various lengths and thicknesses. I raided my brass screw collection and found 15 identical screws that I used to fit the legs back onto the head. Heres some before and after shots. See more
03.01.2022 Today was a day of scraping, rubbing back, spraying and reassembly. The front cowls of the 20X120 were taken back, and prime etched a couple of days back and now they have had their final coats applied. The prism housings were fun as someone has previously tried to take them apart and their wonderful efforts have made it impossible to reverse the damage to get them apart. So all work had to be done with them fully assembled. Masking helped avoid damage to areas which could...nt afford the damage! I am also posting a couple of images to remind you of what they looked like before as well as a side by side image of the left and right cowls, one done and one not. The old paint almost just fell off, you could have used a piece of paper to rub it off. I also made up a small delrin plug for the open aperture for the illuminator in the right hand eyepiece. The previous plug was just a piece of wadded up paper. Next will be the splitting and recementing of the middle lens of the RH eyepiece. It is somewhat in need of it as the image shows. Being a triplet will make it fun!! See more
02.01.2022 Here we are after a week in Victoria, seeing family and operated on friends and a week spent with a stinking head cold. There has been work completed, but not necessarily how I would like to have seen it done. The owner of this binocular and tripod (total weight 45 kg) wanted only the optics restored, the immediate threat of aluminium oxidation removed and a bit of paint slapped on to make it look reasonable. I had to fabricate a couple of 10BA grub screws as the old ones had lost their slot and had to be drilled out. The photos dont do this instrument justice (nor my paintwork!). The image is crisp once more and the detail on the leaves on the trees 200 metres away is incredible. They are a 20X 3 degree Japanese WWII of around the mid 1930s vintage.
01.01.2022 Been a while since my last post, sorry, but medical issues precluded me being able to do anything for a couple of weeks. So, a bit more progress on the 6" f/10 from 1934 and further progress on the Ross of London, on the tripod anyway. Heres a shot of the brass tube being cleaned back. The verdigris was taking over for a while and the brass needed to be cleaned back to be resealed. Im not removing every blemish or every ding, just the oxidised surface gunge.
01.01.2022 I often wonder what becomes of some of the restorations that I perform. The brass telescope that I did last year that was made by Ken Beames back in 1934 has been put on display at the school that owns it in a nice protective enclosure to show it off. I was sent these images by the Laboratory Services manager to show what had been done.
