Help needed with Seben telescope collimation

hi looking for a bit of advice a friend of my has a seben telescope i think it is a 114 model and he had it stored away for a while he recently took it out of storage and wants to start using it again . i tried to collimate it with a laser collimater but when i turned it on all i seen was a red blob on the primary mirror where a sharp dot should have been the primary looks ok in the collimater but was wondering if the secondary is out as i tried to focus on a star and could see nothing . the lenses are not the greatest a 25 and 6.5 plossol with a weird looking 1.5 erecting eyepiece and a 2x barlow any ideas would be helpful thanks

Moved to Observing Equipment forum

Hi ,
Are you sure that your collimator isnt one of the barlowed types?, they give a circular blob instead of a dot,
see
www.cameraconcepts.com/barlowed%20laser%20collimation.pdf

hi dave the collimator i have is an astro professional model bought of stephen in ktec it shows a clears dot when i,m collimating my 200p dob but when i tried the seben it just showed a blob . my mate is bringing it up tonite and i,ll try or mabye torture myself trying to collimate it .but judging what i read on the forums seben are not the best scopes anyway but i,ll try me best he,s had the scope a few years and is interested in getting back into it again have to keep he,s interest going or else persuade him to get a new scope . by the way interesting article on collimating i,ll try that next time on the dob thanks again val.

hey Val,
Are you sure there is nothing in the focuser?really sounds like there is a barlow somewhere over there.It seems odd that a lazer would have that much distortion bouncing off a mirror.How does it look on the secondary?Unless your secondary is miles off and the beam is hitting somewhere in the corner of it and by some odd chance it reflected on the primary?

hi martin to be honest it looks like a blob of red light on the primary but the primary looks ok in the collimator i think it is the secondary and maybe the the focusing tube as its a bit longer than normal i,m having a good look at it this evening let you know how i get on thanks val