As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and more
than one way to build a telescope. Part of the fun of building your own
telescope is your ability to tune various aspects of the design to suit
particular needs or ideas that you have. Your telescope then becomes
uniquely yours.
Of course, this means that there are a lot of decisions to make,
and if you are not familiar with telescope building, you might feel
a bit overwhelmed. These sources and links are designed to help.
Even if you don't adopt one of these plans religiously, they will
acquaint you with the ideas and techniques which will prove valuable.
Richard Berry's book is excellent, and has several different
telescope designs. His design for a 10" Dobsonian
telescope is especially well suited for the beginning
telescope builders. Well worth buying a copy.
John Dobson has done a great deal to popularize telescope
making, particularly using inexpensive materials and concentrating
on building a telescope that works. This set of
plans includes patterns and instructions for both 8" and
10" telescopes. If you are looking for instructions
on how to build a telescope for cheap, this is your best
online resource.
This page isn't as detailed as the pages above, but it has
really nice diagrams and is easy to follow. Check it out
to get the main ideas, then refer to other plans for more
detail.
A really complete, readable and well done manual for
assembling a 4" Dobsonian telescope. The manual is
about 40 pages long, and covers many details. Worth
reading even if you want a bigger scope.
One of the advantages of building your own scope is that
you can optimize it for portability. These are the plans
for a fairly largish telescope (13" f/4.4) that can
be packed as airline luggage. The telescope you can
easily take with you is the telescope you use, so you will
probably find some hints of value here.
All materials on this website are Copyright 2001, Mark T.
VandeWettering. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute
these files for non-profit, personal use.