Vintage Telescope Restoration - Towa 339 - Page III
The Pay Off




















Here with my Sears Discoverer 6305 60mm - also a Towa Scope





Okay - How does it Perform?

Very well thank you!  The star test is excellent and the images it produces confirm the objective is very good.  In use I don't see any issues caused by the objective chip.  "Tiny diamonds on black velvet" is the old cliche' but it really is what this scope presents. Planets and the Moon are fantastic in their sharpness and contrast.  The effect of the extra aperture versus my 60mm is apparent, making the detail in deep sky objects a bit more satisfying.

The mount is solid and smooth.  The slow motion cables are easy to use. A motor drive,  while always an option, is just that - an option, not a necessity.

The size of this scope, both in it's aperture and its physical size seems to me to fall in a sweet spot.  Easier to haul out and set up than my next larger scope, the Edmund 4" f15, but with enough aperture to offer more satisfying views than the 60mm.  I predict that I will spend good deal of time at the eyepiece of my restored "Katana".

Thank you

This project was originally discussed in a thread on Cloudy Nights, one of the internet's premier Amateur Astronomy sites.  In the thread we covered a lot of ground, including discussion of the scope's baffling and optics and other aspects not covered here. Very much worth the read. You can find it here:

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/472839-katana-80mm-f15-towa-339-project-scope/

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone in the Classic Telescopes Forum who so generously offered their advice, experiences, expertise and encouragement to me as I went on and on endlessly about my little obsession for a bit short of three months. They are a wonderful group of people and an immense resource for anybody interested in these classic instruments from our past.  THANK YOU!

To any of you out there who might be interested in trying something similar to this project, I offer my strongest encouragement to do so.  I found this to be as rewarding as any of the projects that I have undertaken in this hobby.  It is especially pleasing to know that a scope that may have met an untimely death has been returned to service and is again providing the wonder and joy for which it was intended. With any luck, it will continue to do so for at least a couple more generations.  I am happy to have had a chance to participate in that, a great legacy by any measure.









PART I     PART II


I welcome your comments and questions at

rnabholz@yahoo.com

 ©2014   Rod Nabholz

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Vintage Telescope Restoration  Towa 339 "Katana"  *   DIY SCT and Mak Cooler

 

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