Recent journal entry:

Bohohooo I lost another battle in the war about painting the telescope black...see the 8 " project in the telescope section of this journal for details.
















This is an animation I made for the trailer of a movie, it's reduced in size (0.5x) and the compession is very strong (XviD quality 89) so the image quality is terrible...you need a DivX codec to run it but I'm sure you already have this ). Left or right click on the image to do whith the animation whatever your browser supports:







12 inch project:
This is a 3D-model of the desing I use for the tube, I will enhance this model while making progress whith the project:



I bought the missing 2 aluminum pipes, now they are all complete and I just have to find time and the will to work on them.

Material listing:
8x 25 mm x 25 mm x 2000 mm aluminium pipes.................................about 164 $
screws with nuts (100x), M5x40 mm..............................................................11 $
shims (250x).................................................................................................7 $



8 inch project:



The 8 " mirror ist spherical now. Phase 1 of 3 ist finished, I'm now up to smooth it out until it's smooth enough for polishing and parabolisation.

I've detached parts of telescope, washed and cleand the pieces several times with a solvent. I cleaned the metal from fat, dirt and the solvent using ammonia solution and a ton of tissues, I didn't touch the metal except with gloves, sprayed the grounding on the telescope parts, sprayed the black colour on the grounded telescope parts...and then?!? It partially peeled off while/after drying!! Here are some of the parts, 3 are missing because colour and grounding peeled off together (the bright spots on the black parts are highlights - the colour was still wet during the shot):



Here are some other parts, in this case it didn't pelt off but after I sprayed the second layer of black colour on it, it became wrinkly.
That indicates that it would have pelt off after a while anyway...



Why is it impossible to get colour on aluminium?!? Do I make the layers too thick??