Sorry, but I somehow lost his original mail. He just needed more clarity on my special rubber bottom truss pole connections. From wpk@saao.ac.zaSat Jul 18 16:21:03 1998 Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 09:38:01 +0200 (GMT+0200) From: Willie Koorts To: Paul Shankland Cc: pshankland@flakeysol.com Subject: Re: Truss pole connections on your 9" Hi Paul Thanks for the nice words on my telescope and website. Your mail prompted me to do something which I have been meaning to do for a long time now, but just never got around doing it, ie. to add a drawing of the bottom truss mounting arrangement to my telescope page. Please have a look at http://www.saao.ac.za/~wpk/scope/rbox.html and see if it is clear enough to see how the overcenter mechanism was made. As far as your other questions go, in hindsight, I was probably luckey to have found the right size rubber after I already bought the Al. tubes for the trusses. I would reccomend going to rubber suppliers first (in Cape Town we have two that sell rubber in almost any shape and size) to see what sizes are avaliable and then select the truss tube (ID) size to match the rubber. BTW, I got my rubber from Cape Town Rubber Co. but that probably won't help you at all. I am very happy with this design and found no movement (flexure) because of the rubbers when using the telescope. As the rubber age one might find it breaking up (perish) which might become a problem. One might try silicon rubber instead, but since it is less firm than normal rubber, flexture might be a problem. Just for good measure, I cut a very coarse "thread" on the inside of the tubes for the rubbers to expand into, but it is probably not necessary. Shout if you need any more info. Regards Willie ps. Where did you get to hear of my site? The ATM mailing list? I noticed that I had a sudden flurry of hits lately. Mr. W.P. Koorts ( wpk@saao.ac.za ) South African Astronomical Observatory PO Box 9 Observatory 7935 South Africa Tel. (27) (21) 47 0025 Fax. (27) (21) 47 3639 World Wide Web ( Work ) http://www.saao.ac.za World Wide Web ( Personal ) http://www.saao.ac.za/~wpk/