The Giant Binocular

Glad to see I'm not alone when it comes to pushing the 9X20 to its limit.

"Billy G"
 
What power are you shooting for ? You better get a selfpropelled tripod to haul them around. Nice leather case sure gonna be expensive.
 
What power are you shooting for ?
Planning on f6, may go to f5.6 depending upon other constraints.
The mirrors will be flexed and f6 should be easier than a faster mirror.
Grinding and polishing on my machine should produce a superb sphere that will take very little flexing to form an excellent f6 parabolic surface. (he states rather hopefully)
 
Not much to show for this afternoons work but I flipped the disk to face it and turn down to fit inside the main central tube.
The welding of the two sides to get the width required left some horrendously hard tough spots that just ripped the edge off the HSS tool bits as soon as look at them irrespective of the speeds and feeds.
I had to resort to an old carbide insert that I ground to a sharp edge and wacked the speed up really high and gave it some wellie. That did the job.
bottom-disk-4.jpg

Thankfully the next disk will be turned down to a metric smidgen under 150mm to fit totally inside the tube so it wont require any welding.
 
I thought I was supposed to be building a binocular not a stern wheeler paddle boat
stand-internals.jpg
This will fit inside the main support tube.
The tube will be bolted to the 6 verticals with 5mm stainless screws.
I need to find time to visit a friends lathe as it wont fit on mine now.
I want to take a mere skin off the top disk and just kiss the verticals for a slightly looser fit.
 
That worked very well.
The assembly now slides easily into the tube.
Next job was making 9 identical lengths of 12mm x 25mm x 90mm for various brackets.
Rather than filing my angle grinder rough cuts to size I decided to try and face them.
I clamped 3 lengths together with the "G" clamp then set them up in the 4 jaw and faced the ends.
The top 4 have already been done in this pic and these three have been faced at one end.

equal-lengths-1.jpg

Held with the clamp then set in the 4 jaw very firmly.
The middle piece is the length to face down to.
Yes, I know that a lot of hanging out but I took it gently with slow feed and shallow cuts and it all worked fine.
Even after the event I find it unbelievable the two outside lengths didnt shift out of position.
You wont know till you try.

equal-lengths-2.jpg
 
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After getting them to the same length I turned down the corners to round them off.
This is where I thought they may be sent sideways if the tool dug in so I superglued them together and used my toolmakers clamp in an aid to help prevent this.
Re thinking this I should have just cut two small spacers to span the three pieces at the jaws but this worked well.

curving-stop.jpg

These were then welded to the end of the foot
The three feet were made from 25x50mm tube with a triangular section cut out then re welded.

foot-1.jpg

foot-all-3.jpg

The remaining 6 lengths have to be drilled 10mm and welded to the base of the paddle wheel.
This all makes a substantial and heavy base that I hope will be stable.
 
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