Hitchin a ride - Telescope style

My new to me Orion ST80-a finally has a mount to ride on. I've had this things for two monnths, so it's been itchin to get out of it's case.

Orion shipped the scope with the mounting rings bolted onto a small dovetail plate. This works slicker than bug s$$# if your tripod/mount has a dovetail receprtor. Unfortunately, my original scope, an Orion Astroview 6, does not have this receptor. I called Orion to see if there was a way to attach theST80 to this mount. They said no.

There are some on the net that sell an adaptor that would do the trick, but they also cost $100+, so that was not going to be happening anytime soon.

There is a plan B though.... In the middle of the dovetail for the ST80, there's a threaded hole than can be used to attach the dovetail to a photo tripod with a 1/4*20 bolt .So what if I could attach a bolt like that the Astroview mount?

The plan I came up with was this, an adapter plate made of 1*2 piece of wood, with two bolts holding it to the head of the mount, and a 1/4*20 bolt sticking out of the middle attach the dovetail plate. My brother helped me with the fabrication (Thanks Tony!)

Since the mount is of a Japaneese design, the measurements are metric.

We cut the wood to length of 18cm. We then drilled the holes for mouting the adapter plate to the mount head. The first hole was 1.5 cm fron the end of the adapter. The second hole was drilled 15 cm from the first hole. The hole for the dovetail plate mounting bolt was drilled in the middle. The head of the mount has two braces for the stock tube rings. The space between these is slightly narrower than the width of the adaptor plate. We ended up take a router to one side to knock down the corners. This helped the adapter fit flat against the mount head.

It looks pretty good, once it is all together. I'm planning on painting the adapter and mounting hardware flat black, to reduce stray light, and make the adapter a little more moisture resistant.




The finished prooduct