Before installing the felt liner to the inside walls of the cradle rings, I removed them
along with the adapter plates from the dovetail plate to help the task
go a little easier. In the image with the liners installed, you will
see that I am performing a test fit of the felt lined cradle rings on
a short scrap piece of 7" OD aluminum tubing. Actually, the scrap is
waste material from the original tube I used for the OTA. Notice just
how much of a gap there is between the scrap tubingk, and the cradle
ring's inside wall. With such a large gap, I had to purchase some
thick felt liner. Unfortunately, the felt liner I bought was too thick
to be used around the entire inside circumference of the cradle ring
halves. So, I wound up using a strip of the thick stuff on the bottom
halves of each cradle ring set, and thinner 1/4" (.250") strips of
felt liner (blocked by the scrap of tubing) on the top half section of
the cradle rings. Despite the unfortunate use of different thicknesses
of felt, same thicknesses of felt liner were mirrored on both cradle
rings. The end result is that the OTA will still form a perpendicular
orientation to the declination axis when mounted in the cradle ring
arms.
Okay, with the felt liner installed, now I can reattach
the cradle rings to the dovetail plate, followed by setting the
Jaegers 6" f/10 "Gelinda J. Dawson" refractor OTA in its caress. |
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