Welcome to Dave Smith's Webpage!
The impetus for creating this webpage was the following discovery.
So, please read on! If you'd rather skip the intro, you can go straight to the ATM page.
As kids my brother, Steve, and I spent many a night stargazing with our 7x35 binoculars under the dark skies of northeast Texas. During the day we'd drool over the Meade and Celestron telescope advertisements in Scientific American. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it!) I was thirty-something before I learned that a person could single-handedly trepan, grind, polish and figure a telescope mirror and fabricate an optical tube assembly to boot at a fraction of the cost of a commercial product. You see, as kids we had access to my Dad's shop (table saw, band saw, jointer/planer, grinder with buffing wheel, drill press, lathe, etc.) and we used that equipment to build all sorts of stuff, including homemade hand-crafted knives like the one pictured here with a brass hilt and deer antler handle.
Now pitted from years of experience! ;^)
My dad worked at Lone Star Steel and would get high carbon steel saw blades, brass and such from the salvage yard. We'd sketch out patterns (pirate's swords, daggers, meat cleavers, filleting and hunting knives) and my dad would cut out the patterns with a cutting torch and rough grind the blades. Then we'd all tackle the blades by sanding and polishing them, cut hilts and solder them on, attach handles and buff the blades to a mirror finish.
So we had the "training" on the equipment and plenty of spare time (Note: Kids used to have spare time even after mowing a 5 acre front yard, planting 100 pounds of seed potatoes, hoeing ten or twelve 100 yard long rows of corn, and shelling enough peas to fill up a 1972 4-door Cadillac!)...we just didn't realize the potential or possibilities! My dad's shop equipment and my days of spare time are long since gone. Bummer. Nevertheless, I'm here to tell you that, "Yes, you certainly can build your own telescope and it can rival (and likely surpass) those commercial jobs like the ones I used to drool over!" And you don't need a shop full of equipment to do it either! This is Amateur Telescope Making! (a.k.a. ATM)
Dumpster Dave's ATM-Related Page
My brother and I also
enjoy building
and flying remote control (RC, R/C) airplanes. If you'd like to see
some of my creations take a look at my
Just remember, "What goes up, must come down!"
Feel free to e-mail me at: unspamsmithersscope@yahoo.com (remove the 'unspam')