I am in the process of "refurbishing" an old 3 1/2" f10 scope that was owned by the late Bill Bradfield (comet hunter extraordinaire). I have got it to "proof of concept" stage, and now I need to improve the contrast by properly baffling the tube (it is unreal how much light scatter you have when the tube is only matt black!). At this stage the optics are looking good: it coped happily with a 120x view of Jupiter last night, but the seeing was atrocious.
I have included "before" and after images. As you will see, Bill never worried about aesthetics (check out his objective cover!!!), and used whatever came to hand, so I have tried to keep true to his memory by using what I could find lying around and a piece of 4" pvc down-pipe for the tube. The vixen-style dove plate attachment is made from a piece of wood I planed to shape, and with aluminium "L" section bent to fit. I had some old tube rings which I have lined to fit with bits of packing material from the cupboard. Cost so far is around $A20 (mainly for the paint!)...
This is Bill's original (and, yes folks, that is a piece of vacuum cleaner tube jammed into the focuser to act as the eyepiece holder, with a 1", 25mm
From the front, complete with objective cover!
Current refurbishment: The objective assembly is a solid brass tube, about 5" long (ex military, probably pre-WW11), so I have left the central bit of brass showing - the rest is ribbed and covered in military paint, so not worth polishing up).
It will be interesting to see how well it performs when I have added baffles.
Happy viewing,
Dean