equitorial platform

Hello,

Can anyone point me in the right direction re: making an equitorial platform for a 16" dob?

thanks for all your thoughts and suggestions,

dan

Just about everything you need to know can be found at Chuck Shaw's website and Jan van Gastel's website .
I'm just putting the finishing touches on my own platform, built from the info on these sites. One main difference in my approach was how I made the conical sectors. Once I figured out the circumference I cut them straight using a circle cutting jig on a bandsaw, then I cut the angle to match my latitude using a tablesaw. The arc was smooth enough off of the bandsaw that I could glue an aluminum strip right to it without any sanding. It saved the time of making a jig for the whole platform and trying to true the sectors with a belt sander. Good luck on your project.

Doug Tanaka

Here are a few more links that may be useful. I have been collecting these in advance of starting to build an EQ platform. Note also that the Affordable EQ Platforms has links to several other pages, some of which are redundant to those already mentioned.

http://eqplatforms.0catch.com/
http://www.ghgcorp.com/cshaw/platform.htm
http://home.hiwaay.net/~warrenca/Astronomy/Projects/Tracker/Manual.html
http://home.att.net/~dale.keller/atm/atmother/shouldice/shouldice.htm