I was machining a base to adapt the EQ1 saddle to a Taiwanese-made Vixen telescope dovetail shoe. That was not much work. The EQ1 until now had some rings to hold my 3" f/4.5 reflector, but I want both to use the Vixen dovetail. So I needed a dovetail plate on which to mount the rings. This is a bit more work.
The Vixen dovetail is not what I think of as a dovetail, more like someone ran the poor little dove through a saw, leaving only half a dovetail. Here you can see it is only one side, a 10 degree deviation from square. (You may need to blow that picture up to see it.)
I needed a protractor to measure that 10 degree angle. To my mild surprise and pleasure, you can still buy protractors! The home schoolers must still be teaching geometry.
So I milled a piece of white acetal to fit into the slot, then put it in a mill vise on a tilting table so that a horizontal pass would give me that angle.
Yes that is the old mill vise, not my wonderful new one, which I did not think could be used with the tilting table. Once I was done, I saw how; I just need to tap four 10-32 holes in the tilting table for the clamps.
Anyway, once I was almost done, I discovered that Agena Astro sells a Vixen dovetail plate made in Germany, a NATO member so I ordered that. But I learned a lot making this one!
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