Mirror Grinding

I started, but never finished grinding an 8" mirror. I began making a low-focal ratio mirror for deep sky observing (which means grinding it to one curve) then decided I wanted a high-magnification planetary scope instead (and reground to a different curve) then kids came along and my hobbies stopped.

Along the way, I built my own tools, like the necessary Foucault tester and a mirror grinding machine. My machine was basically a variable speed drill driving some eccentric gears that pushed the blank around. I have no idea whose plans I followed but there are lots out there. I planned to use it for the polishing stage but ended up giving the machine to a friend who tells me he used it successfully to polish a mirror.

Mel Bartels is a giant in the amateur telescope making (ATM) community. He's made many amazing scopes and advanced the art for the amateur a lot. See his scopes and articles at http://www.bbastrodesigns.com/tm.html

Stellafane is an annual gathering of amateur telescope makers (and astronomy enthusiasts) in Vermont. They have some nicely organized ATM info at http://stellafane.org/tm/atm/index.html

Previous discussion from two years ago has a lot of useful comments and links.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503667

If you're interested in this and live in the SF Bay Area, there's a workshop for this at the Chabot Space Center that's been ongoing for decades: http://www.chabotspace.org/telescope-makers-workshop.htm

Been pondering grinding a mirror for a long while now; however even the blanks are quite expensive these days (in the UK at least)...

Also, given the amazing amount of time you need to do it, I'd rather go for a rather impractically large one, otherwise, well, I do have 10" newtonian 'scope already.. But it's unlikely a 16" mirror is a realistic 'first try' :-)