Yes its called the Platter Master and it was the ultimate observing tool for our last two great comets. Using big 15 x 80mm by 5 deg. of field bino's and rotating 360 deg. in total comfort made for excellent observing. This project was very simple to make all you needed was a semi lay down lawn chair at about a 45 deg. angle, an old mike stand or cymbal stand, uniball from a truckers defrost fan, a round plywood platter with some ebony star glued to it, a triangular base with 3 teflon pads " sounds familiar " and of course a real expensive pair of binoculars, unless you make them as I did. In this photo the Platter Master was still under construction since then the only real changes I made were putting two big springs in place of the 5 lb. counter weight giving better stability by reducing overhead weight. I would like to add one more thing once you have built this device and used it you will never look at another binocular mount, you will be spoiled.


I had to throw this one in because I believe my use of Aluminum came from my fathers examples, this tube assembly is his from 1959, it is made from three 3/4" aluminum tubes slid through about seven rings made of 1/4" plywood then covered with a 15 thou aluminum skin, sounds a bit like an airplane wing. The scope uses an 8" f 7.3 mirror that was made by my late father. The mount of course is the same one used on my folded 12.5" scope on the Projects page. The photo is from the Mt.Kobau Star Party of 1985 where the scope and mount picked up a Mechanical and Optical Excellence award.


No I am not going to explain how I built that Medium format camera, the purpose of this photo is to inspire some people to grab an old lathe or any kind of metal fabricating equipment for example: drill press, bandsaw etc.and go for it as I did 20 years ago. Even if you never plan to go as crazy as I did a beater lathe bought cheap is worth having around, just think of all those adapters you had to buy or maybe that shaft you needed to resize, eventually you will wonder how you lived without one. So that's it, everything on my GWP Website I made using these three pieces of equipment, the total cost in Canadian money was $800.00, which is nothing considering the years of endless projects.

Lathe ( 6" x 18" ) Atlas bench model USA

Drill Press ( standard 12 speed ) Taiwan

Vertical Bandsaw ( Rexcutt ) Taiwan

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