First of all, I was introduced to the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers and John Dobson at the age of 13. I quickly resolved to build my own 8"
Here's a review of this oldie by Ed Ting:
https://www.scopereviews.com/page1x.html
John provided some guidance and tutelage. But rather than using old porthole glass for the primary mirror I elected to get a pre-figured set of mirrors from Meade. I funded the purchase with money from my paper route, and I gathered the materials quickly from a home improvement store - Ace Hardware I recall, though I had to get the Sonotube from a supplier that specialized in concrete for contractors. Building out the
Collimating was done by adjusting these bolts in the back of the mirror.
The rocker box was pretty easy, and I used a handsaw to cut all of the plywood. In fact, I didn't use a single power tool in the scope's construction. I got the teflon I needed from the local TAP plastics store after making some phone calls - as they didn't carry it at ACE. I used closet flanges as the bearings which rode on the teflon. On the top of the base, which was 3/4" plywood I placed a round piece of formica which supported more teflon. When I tested it out it moved very smoothly.
It took me about a week making the scope in the summer of 1983, and I spent several hours a day on it. Outside of my paper route I had a lawn-mowing business serving Kensington and Berkeley residents and I had about ten regular clients. So when I wasn't mowing lawns or delivering papers I worked on the scope. As an aside, one of my clients was the Nobel prize winner Charles Townes (maser and the laser), and we often talked physics and astronomy over a couple of glasses of lemonade when I was at his house. I had met him through church as my mom was friends with his wife, so somehow I got the gig.
When I was finally done I hauled the scope out to our east-facing deck. I tried out the scope at about 4 in the morning at the beginning of September (it was still summer) and I went after the Crab Nebula. After focusing and collimating the scope to the best of my ability and looking around (star-hopping) through my 6x30mm finderscope I finally got zeta Tauri in the field of view. I was using Wil Tirion's Sky Atlas 2000 which was a newfangled atlas at the time.
I was amazed when I suddenly noticed a faint cloud - it was the remnant of the nova noticed by Chinese astronomers in the eleventh century! So my 8"
So that was my