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Richard Berry's ``Build Your Own Telescope'' is a ``classic'' telescope making book for those who want to make a small newtonian reflector. It has designs for building the following scopes:
All designs assume minimal woodworking skills and hand tools.
There are also chapters on choosing what kind of telescope to make/buy, what types of mounts/focusers/eyepieces there are. Several chapters cover making and testing a newtonian primary mirror, including how to build a foucault tester, but the book stresses the mechanical aspects of building the scope and mount more than optics.
Required reading if you're thinking of building your first telescope.
Texereau's ``How to Make a Telescope'' is the ``classic'' telescope making book for those who want to make their own mirrors.
The book covers building the ``standard'' telescopes, which are an 8" f/6 newtonian on an alt-azimuth mount and 8" and 10" cassegrains. There is information on all aspects of telescope design and construction, but the book concentrates more on optics. Note that this book does not cover the dobsonian mount in any detail. This book makes a great complement to Richard Berry's Build Your Own Telescope
Required reading if you're thinking of making your own optics.
The subtitle of this book, ``6 complete projects & a stargazer's guide,'' is pretty descriptive.
You won't find information on making your own optics, but the plans are very complete. If you're looking to build a telescope and have minimal mechanical skills, be forewarned, this book stresses woodworking. Many of the plans are unnecessarily complicated by the excessive use of wood and brass. On the other hand, most of the scopes look like works of art.
Perhaps the most interesting feature is the discussion of how to care for and use your telescope, and the plans for ``A Scope Like Alice''. The rest of the book is useful, although I think Turn Left at Orion has better observing and care information.
In short, although there's not a lot of material in here that isn't covered elsewhere, it is a nicely put together book, and it's inexpensive. I bought it on a whim, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Click here to order.
Click here to order.