The shed part is pretty much complete now. Last weekend I made the door, got the rest of the weathersheeting in place, finished the roof, and got the wood preservative on. I also added a 2×3 to strengthen the beam with the castors so that the ends no longer touch the track; I’ve to do the same to the other side sometime, but as it stands I can move the roof easily with one hand.
Heres what it looks like open:
Inside there is a bit more work to be done. Heres what it looks like at the moment with a CPC tripod to give an idea of size:
The next job is to excavate that hole a bit more so that I can fill it with concrete as the pier base. I’d dug it roughly 2ft x 2ft x 2ft before building the structure on top of it, but have decided to deepen that to about 1m and widen it slightly also. As of tonight it looks like this:
That’s proving to be quite hard to work in, so just as well I’ve lost some weight recently! The idea is that that concrete base will come up to about floor level. On top of that will be a 2ft tall steel pier, on top of that a smaller pier section to connect to the scope mount. Over time I’ll get a wedge for proper equatorial mounting of the CPC, but initially I think the top small pier section will be an “owl’s nest” type fixture and I’ll bolt the CPC directly to it. On to Part 6!
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