After following and reading the mishap and happy ending about the damage to bald1's telescope, it got me interested again in both pulling out and using my Meade ETX90 as well as motivating (since I am now retired) to building a portable Dobson "light bucket" including grinding the mirror.

Hoping this thread will share thoughts and ideas with others who are interested and/or doing the same.

Never have gone the ATM (amateur telescope making) route. I do recall back in the '50's-early '60's a friend grinding mirrors. And a bit later in the mid '60's when John Dobson's "Dobsonian" mount became extremely popular.

I never had the skill set to either grind and polish a mirror or do the woodworking necessary for a well balanced and smooth operating Dobsonian.

I strongly recommend, as I did for sig229-SAS, to join and peruse the tremendous wealth of knowledge on the Cloudy Nights astronomy forum.

Regardless I wish you all the best in your ATM journey here! Keep us posted.

I used to go to Stellafane all the time.

I was in a telescope club as a junior high student in late 50s. There was eventually a sort of club project that taught me a lot as a mildly involved clutz but I never followed up on building my own.

In the late 80s I was in the Rose City Astronomy Club for a while. There were some projects by amazingly skilled hobbyist with home-built models, mostly Dobsonians. You can make some great light buckets with a bit of disciple & a few extra $ for parts.

Good Luck, & please show us your progress.

Thanks guys.

I have both Cloudy Nights and Stellafane saved and will be looking over in the next few days and weeks.

Being retired, I now have the time to do projects like this. Always wanted for years (decades) to build a Dobson and grinding my own mirror. Wanted to be an astronaut growing up (child of the Gemini 7 era) but my eyesight was not perfect so that did not work out. But, I still look to the stars.

Will keep all posted with pics.

I was interested and planning one back in the day when I was working at a builder's supply co. That got put on the back burner when they went under and I lost my job.

I was using "The Dobsonian Telescope: A Practical Guide for Building Large Aperture Telescopes" at the time but now I see the publisher has shut down. I had purchased a few books from them.
https://www.willbell.com/tm/dobtel.htm

How big are you thinking? My inspiration was Obsession Telescopes and even their biggest is designed to be "portable".
I would imagine the grinding of your own mirror would be the limiting factor.

dsiets ... I was thinking 8" with grinding, building and using to see how it works out. If I find myself using it a lot, gain more experience and knowledge then maybe moving up to 12". Think that would be my upper limit.

My buddy was the head cheese of the ATM judging for the Texas Star Party where we were regulars attendees. For at least a couple of years, he had a mirror grinding class going on. I really thought I was going to get into that when he brought it up the year before, but our other buddies and I just never got into it. I'm guessing because we already had our equipment, and my buddies had done this already back in the '60s, '70s and '80's.

More power to you for wanting to build from scratch. If I was to build another scope, it would be in kit form. (I don't have anymore woodworking tools or space for them.) Then I'd get a mirror from some reputable company. Pegasus used to be known as a good company, but I don't know now since I've been out of the loop for the last 2 years.

I had an 18" 4.5 Telekit. Here is the link to their site below:

https://www.astrosystems.biz/telekits.htm

Thanks ftttu ... great information and I have the website saved. Dang, would love to have an 18" 4.5 Telekit ! Guess I could consider a kit, however I do have all the woodworking tools so don't mind building it. Still gonna try grinding the mirror, at least to know I tried, and if it does not work out figured I at least learned something and will buy a commercially made mirror.