Flocking (1 Viewer)

Hi

I recently ordered and got delivered a sheet of Black Velour Flocking Material.

Before going ahead I'd like to check with those who have gone through the procedure before.

What parts would benefit from flocking, and what is the risk in de-assembling and re-assembling my SW80 setup? Are any special tools needed?

The extension tubes: no brainer since they are coated with a reflective semi-blank paint, and should be risk free (except having to re-do if the foil is misplaced or sticks where it should not).
The focuser? Is there a risk anything will go wrong, e.g. ending up with misaligned focuser that takes specialist skills to adjust.
The tube? Ditto. Also how difficult/critical is the mounting of the lenses?

/Tord

Taking apart the scope is very simple. The whole front lens cells just screws onto the main tube so there's no problem with removing glass or anything like that. Getting the lens cell to unscrew in the beginning may be hard depending on how tight it is. One of those rubber strap tools like they use for getting oil filters off car engines are good for this job. When you put the lens cell back on then just doing it hand tight is good enough. On cold damp days I quite often unscrew mine just to wipe off any condensation on the rear of the lens.

Again, with the focuser it's just a simple job of undoing the three screws and it just slides out. As with the lens cell, the focuser wont go out of alignment and there's no adjustments possible anyway with how it fits to the telescope tube.

Inside the tube are the baffle rings. You can either flock the whole tube and leave them out completely or flock each section and put the baffles back in. The baffles should just be a push/slide fit if they are the same as mine. I did a test on my scope and photographed a series of subjects with the baffles in and the baffles out and there was no difference in contrast. Just flocking the whole tube is good enough. The main area that suffers is all the attachments like extension tubes and they are the things that benefit the most in cutting out unwanted reflections.

Flocking the actual scope will probably only result in a few percent increase in contrast, I doubt you would even see it visually. Flock the interior of the dew shield and the extension tubes and see how it goes. I mainly only see an improvement when I use teleconverters, barlows and such like and that's where reflections can become more apparent and that's usually down to shiny paint in the attachments.

Paul.

Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge and experience.

As long as the inside of the tube is flat black you don't need to flock the tube. In some less scopes it is the lack of blackened lens edges in the cell and the focus drawtube that can be a problem. Any shiny chrome parts inside the drawtube and particularly on the outside of the inner section need to be blackened.