Stockton Astronomical Society

ATM Page

Jeff Baldwin

The Stockton Astronomical Society holds an Amateur Telescope Makers (ATM) workshop each month in the garage at Jeff Baldwin’s house at 684 Pioneer Ave. in Lathrop, California. This is usually done on a Saturday nearest the Full Moon, and we usually meet from 10 AM until 3 PM. There is no prerequisite skill level or experience needed, and the attendees range from brand spanking new to old and experienced. Telescope projects range from around 4” in aperture up to and including at least 40” in aperture. Some of us are building telescopes, some are grinding and polishing mirrors, some of us are repairing telescopes, some of us are watching, learning and just hanging out. There are individual skills that participants can harvest off of others, and between all of us we usually solve any problem facing us regarding telescopes and astronomical optics.

Our next ATM session is Saturday, August 14th from 10AM to 3PM. We meet at Baldwin’s Shop at 684 Pioneer Avenue in Lathrop, CA. My phone is (209) 594-1894.

Please enjoy the individual links. This site is a work in progress, so check back once in a while to see if things have changed. These sites are in order that would produce a telescope mirror, so you can either check them out in order or jump to whichever topic you need to see.

1 Curve Generating                              8 Figuring, Foucault and Wire Tests

2 Making Tools                                    9 Ronchi Testing

3 Coarse Grinding                                10 Star Testing

4 Fine Grinding                                    11 Interferometry (Bath & Spherical Wave)

5 Pitch Laps                                         12 Making Flats and Secondary Mirrors

6 Polishing                                           13 Newton Interferometer

7 Testing for Astigmatism                    14 Cutting Glass Disks

                                                            15 Aluminization