Tim's notes From the Workshop #1+

On 1/19/2014 9:35 PM, Tim Crawford wrote:
> Greetings once again,
> There will be a workshop this week, January 21, at the Broder,from 7:30pm till 9. This week I will continue to grind the donated mirror. It is coming along famously. I will start to use 500 grit this week. It will not be to long now. It is now time to start the design of the new scope. Thanks to Dr. Tom and Dr. Jerry I am able to easily see these projects come to fruition.  If you are able, come I'm by and  see us. Bring your ideas, projects or questions.
> T

On 1/13/2014 8:06 AM, Tim Crawford wrote:
> Greetings all,
> I am scheduling a workshop this Tuesday, January 14th, at the Broder Building  starting at 7:30pm. Please feel free to drop in if you can make it. I really don't have a specific topic for the evening but I would like to continue the fine grinding on the donated 8". I do have a question for you all. What would it take to create a permanent dedicated set up to do, say, asteroid occultation studies? Make this guesstimating with the precondition that a location is already available. It can also be remote setup with remote access. Do not consider cost, but instead what hardware/software would it take?
> T

January, 2014 SBAU newsletter:
From the Workshop #1...
Tim Crawford
    Greetings from the workshop! Our mirror class, originally created by our own Tom Whittemore, is now in its eleventh year! It seems like just yesterday we were at the Broder Building gathering for our first encounter with grinding a working mirror to be integrated into a hand-crafted Newtonian-type telescope. For many of us these are Dobsonian scopes utilizing John Dobson's famous, simple and elegantly-designed scopes.
    Our goal is to keep you abreast of the most current techniques which Amateur Telescope Makers(ATMs) can offer. Now, most of you are very proficient with telescopes. Still, I hope to give you a first-hand example of what may happen when you are encouraged to make your own telescope mirror and, when this is done, to design and build a telescope.
    First you are handed an 8” disc of Pyrex. Next you are given a ceramic grinding tool made essentially from bathroom tile. Since your grinding tool has the same hardness as does your mirror, the tool will wear down the glass when silicon carbide is used as an abrasive between the two. This is how you start to make a truly fine mirror! Eleven years ago, along with some patient instruction from Tom, this is all we were given. But, in the meantime, many of us went on to complete our mirror-and-telescope making projects.
    In future editions of the “joys of mirror making and telescope building,” I will get into some of the finer details of making a research-grade telescope mirror. Please stay tuned! Happy New Year!