Telescope Buliding

Hi,
I'm thinkg of building a telescope from scratch. I already have two books on the subject. So I have a good bit of information already on how to go about constructing it. But what I would like to know is where i can get telescope supplies such as the primary mirror, the secondary mirror, spiders, finder scopes etc. I already know of one or two companies that do the mirrors (Galvoptics, Galaxy Optics). Has anyone built their own scope, and what comapnies did you use for the mirror, and were they any good? Any information would be great.

Hi, The club built a 13" dob nearly 20 years ago and it works great to this day, unfortunately I do not know where they got the parts from.
It was very simple to build, if scopes were not as "cheap" as they are these days, it would be the only viable option for me.

Orion Optics:
www.orionoptics.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

Oldham Optical
www.oldham-optical.co.uk/

These would be the two main sites in the uk for large aperture mirrors.

Clear skies,

Thanks very much. Those site's are very usefull. But how can one be sure of the quality of the mirrors. Don't want to spend a huge amount of money only to find out that the mirror isn't very good.

Both these companies are reputed to produce pretty good mirrors. I don't think you'll go wrong with either of these. These two companies produce the vast majority of mirrors for scopes made in the UK and Ireland.

Thanks. I'll post some details of the telescope when I start building it. Which may not happen for months.