Saint Petersburg Astronomy Club - Mirror Lab

Location

We are looking for a new home
As soon as we have the new location set we will post the location and hours here.

Our Founder

Paul McNabb founded the mirror lab in 1997 in order to create the best amateur telecopes possible. Inch for inch our mirrors surpass store bought or commercial grade scopes.

04/12/2012 more

Members

  • Ralph Craig - Lab Instructor
  • Allen Maroney - Lab Instructor
  • Ron Jones - The Figurer
  • Mike Davis - Casts Mirrors
  • Dimitri - Support

Friends

  • James Lerch - Robo Foucault
  • Matt Terry
  • Charlie Mullen
  • Bruce Kazcmarik
  • Keevy McAlavy

In Memorium

  • Irv Nadelhaft
  • Lenny Remetta

04/12/2012 more

Welcome

Where the 19th Century Art of Mirror Making Meets the 21st Century

The Saint Petersburg Mirror Lab is a small band of dedicated mirror grinders and telescope makers living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. We offer a mirror making class for interested persons. We strive to create the best mirrors our home brew technology can muster. This includes robotic foucault testing and laser interferometry.

  Rough Grinding a Honeycomb Mirror Blank
2016-11-10
Mike Davis has begun rough grinding another of his home made, honeycomb-back, light weight, mirror
blanks. Here he is using a couple of stacked barbell wights for the tool and 60 mesh silicon carbide
grit.

  Unusual Condiment Tray
2016-11-04
At the SPAC October picnic we used a 16 inch mirror as the condiment tray. It was recently started
with 60 grit and had about 80 thousandths of an inch of depth on it.

  3D Printed Focuser
2016-09-23
This is Tom Spano's 3D printed Crayford focuser. The white area was printed and it is internally
using a honeycombed design for strength.

  Paul with his finished dew heater controller
2015-09-03
Paul took a different approach and mounted the dew heater controller board from the lid of an Otter
box. This came out really nice. Great work Paul! Now all we need is a little dry air and clear
skies.

  Paul finished another mirror!
2015-07-31
Paul and his finished 10" f6 1/7th wave BVC mirror.

  Brent and Joey finished their 10 inch mirror
2015-06-06
Brent and Joey proudly display their amazingly well polished 10" f/5 mirror. it came in better than
1/6th wave with a Strehl of .93. Congratulations!

  Dimitri building a dew heater controller
2015-06-06
Dimitri (right), with a little help from Paul, built a dual channel dew heater controller at the lab
today. We should have seven of these keeping our telescopes dew free within a couple of weeks.

  Clean SkyGlow filter
2015-04-30
This SkyGlow filter was turning into a mold growing machine. A little 91% Isopropyl Alcohol and a
few cotton balls cleaned it up beautifully. This same approach has worked well on eyepieces in
pretty bad shape. If the optics are bad use distilled water first to get any grit off. Always pat
with the cotton ball, don't wipe unless there is no choice. Wiping may scratch the optics. Do not
use Alcohol on coated corrector plates or bad things happen (really, I know). Distilled water and
cotton balls has worked for us.

  Tom Spano's Newton Telescope Replica
2015-04-29
Tom did a beautiful job building this working replica of the original Newtonian telescope.

  Unusual Press
2015-04-29
This lap is ready to start it's press. The parchment paper on the lay is used to prevent adding
more correction to the center of the mirror during figuring. The shape helps feather out he contact
area.

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