Hawaiian Kids and Scopes

John Dobson and I arrived at Keahole International Airport on the Big Island of Hawaii on December 13 to participate in a Telescopes for Kids project, offered up Aloha style by members of the Mauna Kea Astronomical Society.

This project was the brainchild of a local amateur astronomer, Lutz Hoffman. He approached a resident rich guy on the island about funding a program whereby 50 kids would be given the opportunity to make their own mirror, and build their own dobsonian inspired mount using materials available on this remote island. Earl Bakken, inventor of the pacemaker lives on an exclusive cove north of Kona, and was the angel who sponsored this program. His only neighbor on the remote cove is Paul Mitchell, another rich guy who makes shampoo.

Mr Bakken was presented with a proposal (which included many pictures of lots of kids making telescopes from some of my Project Astro activities) and a few months ago he offered to fund the program.

I set about immediately pricing optics – that’s the part I was responsible for. Newport Glass offered pre-generated F8 6 inch pyrex mirror blanks and glass tools at an incredible price. They generated the curve for free (normally this part costs $10 per tool and $10 per pyrex blank. That alone saved us $1,000.

Around Thanksgiving 50 mirrors, tools assorted abrasives and medium burgundy pitch were airborne on their way to the flank of Hualalei Volcano, the site of our workshop and guest residence, and the most underrated volcano, and yet the most likely to blow next volcano, on the big island. Ed Erbeck located “1 point something” inch secondaries for me. Ed Falk – another TACo who made a truss style 10 incher in our Sidewalk Astronomers fall telescope-making class at the Cal Academy of Sciences sliced one inch dowels at a 45 degree angle to hold the little secondaries. 50 of them. All were airborne to Hawaii in late November.

Shortly after that John and I were airborne ourselves. We arrived as the mirror grinding session was underway. A one-day session was led by ATM Paul Sears from South Point. Some of you may know Paul from his active involvement in Meteor Group Hawaii. The Kona Imin Cultural Center in the farming village Holualoa was magically transformed into a telescope making workshop. A dozen tables were spread with newspapers, 6 inch pyrex blanks with matching tools, which were taking on smoother and smoother curves. Three to four kids at a table were working their way thru finer and finer grits.

It was quite organized for so many kids. All tables kept at the same grit, then all was cleaned up, and the kids changed shirts, and started with the next grade of grit. Since the curves were pregenerated, the rough grinding was dispensed with, and the kids worked their way through 220, 320, 500 and 12M abrasives.

From 9 am to 3pm they pushed glass – 40 kids big and small, mostly middle and high schoolers. Some from private schools. Some homeschoolers, most public school kids. They were selected for this project by their teachers, and their own initiative. The kids who would most likely benefit from the telescope making were selected. They had to do the work to qualify for the program themselves, so those with most initiative were chosen. At least a third of them were girls!

And a few of their teachers made mirrors too! At 3 PM all mirrors and tools were packed up and went home with their student. Kids and telescope would reconvene one week later for pitch lap day. Now it was my turn to do some stargazing and sightseeing. Next Scopes for Kids Day was a week away.

Dumpster Diving with Dobson

If the first day was smooth sailing, and it was, the week in between the two kids sessions were anything but smooth!

First, our host, Lutz Hoffman decided to run the Honolulu Marathon rather than participate in the first session with kids on Sunday the 13th of December, even though this was his project. He didn’t show up till Wednesday night! Nobody knew where he was – and we didn’t know the status of the rest of the project – although we had a sinking feeling there was no status on the rest of the project.

We spent an enjoyable Monday thru Tuesday morning at South Point enjoying the hospitality of Meteor Group Hawaii and Mauna Kea Astronomical Society President Paul and his wife Kathleen Sears. Paul is a big alternative energy user and consultant, with solar panels and a windmill powering his house and meteor observing /equipment shed. He also has lava tubes – three of them running thru his one hectare property. We picked fresh fruits and veggies from their massive garden, took my scope out for its furthest southern observing session to date –South Point is the most southernly point in the US at 19 degrees latitude! We hiked around the point, noting the geology, watched the sunset and hiked back to the car. That night we had lively conversation, interspersed with magnificent looks at Jupiter and Saturn thru the 9 Nagler at 202X thru my scope before it got DRENCHED in a sudden downpour. That’s Hawaii for you – dark clear skies one moment, rain the next. But as they say in Hawaii, no rainbows without rain.

After this brief peaceful interlude, we plunged into telescope making. On the drive back from South Point we a stopped at the grocery store in Captain Cook. Captain Cook died and was, um eaten by the Hawaiians right here. Not at the grocery store, but nearby. One of the items necessary for pitch lap pouring for 40 mirrors is 7 empty three pound coffee cans, so I bought a big can of Maxwell House coffee for 6 bucks on the drive down, with all intentions of throwing away the coffee to use the can. Luckily Paul and Kathleen had TONS of them, and we drove back with our 7 cans. While in the grocery line I met an interesting fellow. I’m pretty outgoing at the grocery store, and when this really nice guy asked me if I was returning the coffee to buy some good Kona coffee, I said, no I was using the cans to make telescopes. Well he smiled and said “I’m a scientific optical glass maker and a glass blower”… “Have an observing platform, but no telescope yet. Maybe you can suggest scopes for me “ John was off in search for Dove Bars, but soon Cyrus, aka Cy, Wagner, scientific class blower and owner of Smoker’s Hardware (he makes certain kinds of smoking pipes, apparently), an only in Hawaii head shop he is franchising) discovered each other and were busily chatting away. John gave a talk with a slide show at his son’s elementary school a few days later. Cy came and helped with pitch lap Sunday too!

I’ll be combining some excerpts from HAS VP Barry Peckham’s writeup of the weekday adventures now. Barry joined us Tuesday thru Friday, Dec 15 thru 18 for the telescope making part of the project.

We picked up Barry at the airport on our way back from the South Point Tuesday the 15th. He arrived with rescue equipment, a box of $1000 worth of his own tools, rocker box sideboard and trunnion templates for cutting plywood parts for the scopes we needed to read some of the kids mirrors. He also brought a “gut full of anxiety.”

We discovered that the donation of 20 plywood sheets had fallen thru. We discovered that Sonotube does not exist on Hawaii. We discovered that there were no parts of the project ready for us other than the mirrors, which was orchestrated from California! And an AWOL leader! So we dialed for plywood, sonotube, drainpipes, LP records, and the many parts needed to pull this project off. Then we found Trojan Hardware, managed by an amateur astronomer. She was really helpful in finding the bits and pieces we needed. Including a call to many plumbers to locate the little drainpipe pieces we use as focuser drawtubes. And she donated sandpaper, nails, screws. We shopped till we dropped getting glue, drill bits, cardboard mailing tubes and shingles.

Next we embarked on a little dumpster diving. Most woodshops close up at 4:00PM so at 4:15 we were driving around Kailua-Kona’s light industrial park, looking in all the construction dumpsters. We found some wood, some laminate, and some teak, which we formed into pitch lap stirring sticks. It was pretty funny pulling up to the dumpsters, three car doors plus trunk flinging open and three of us dashing to the dumpsters! Looking in, grabbing stuff, stowing it in the trunk, hopping back in the car and off we went to the next dumpster at the next shop. That was our Tuesday.

Wednesday morning Barry and I found a sympathetic woodshop. We dashed over and introduced ourselves. After looking us over and hearing our dilemma, they offered the use of their shop, tools, including a huge table saw the next day. Wednesday night by flashlight, we used Barry’s jig saw to cut the waterlogged plywood procured at a local lumber store. Water came squirting out of the wood onto Barry’s face from the wet wood as he cut rocker box pieces from the templates. We also took sunset beach walks and saw a green flash and my first look at Venus this season over the Kona Coast. And ate Thai food to help balance our hectic days. Telescopes came out at night of course, but that’s another story.

Thursday the mounts were constructed at the local Kailua-Kona woodshop we found the day before, and the guys there gave wood scraps and let Barry use their fancy power tools. One 20 foot piece of Sonotube was located in Hilo, 80 miles away. At only $4.95 a FOOT, too! Luckily, they drove it over the Saddle Road between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa to the wood shop for free! Soon we had 5 tubes. And two rocker boxes. The only ones working on these scopes were the three of us non residents. Telescope making is a lonely avocation!

Friday the 18th. we made two tubes. Barry left for his twice monthly Molokai Ranch star parties. Shingles for the spider were attached to the dowels. Tailgates were screwed in, and the whole rocker boxe plus sonotube balanced with a leftover mirror. Now we were ready for the Pitch Lap Sunday.

Squished pitch in the Hawaiian heat

Well, now we had two telescopes completed. I wanted a pitch lap pouring dress rehearsal Saturday before the kids arrived on Sunday morning. Pour some pitch laps for some of the kids early. Make sure everything worked, and train the helpers. That sort of thing.

It’s a good thing we did the practice session, as boy did we ever had problems now! As if we hadn’t enough challenges getting materials to build the rockers. We started by breaking up the 50 pound block of pitch a few days beforehand. Smashing it to smithereens, and placing it in the coffee cans. Between that day we broke it up and Saturday, the stuff SOFTENED without any heat. Glued itself back into one big misshapen glob the color of a Caffe Latte. That’s a bad thing! A very bad thing! This pitch was too soft! Or the heat and humidity were too much. Or a combination of both!

We poured a practice lap on teacher Jim Pitt’s mirror and started polishing. The grooves squished together in about 10 minutes of polishing! So we all put on our thinking caps, and as it was raining cats and dogs over the volcano, we scuttled our Mauna Kea dark sky observing plans. Bummer! That was the new moon Saturday night, too. But Mauna Kea is a three hour drive from where we sat, and no one (except me of course) wanted to risk the weather. So I joined the thinkers instead. I had a nearly all night observing session the previous night anyway.

We poured an extra 10 laps on Saturday night, and pressed the F8 curves into them. These could be used when the students were waiting for their own squished lap to be repressed. We decided to repress the grooves for the kids in an assembly line. And we decided to haul the 40 kids 100 yards down the hill from the workshop to the little rental house for their pitch laps on Sunday morning. That way no messy pitch, hot plates (which no one remembered to get anyway) need to be transported in cars.

Beginning at 9:10 AM until 10:19 AM carload after carload of kids waited in line for John to pour their pitch lap on to their 6 inch tool, and press the mirror curve into it, press grooves we knew would disappear after moments of polishing.

A chorus line of strong and hunky guys were given the duty of repressing the grooves with dowels, and repressing the curve onto the mirrors. This happened about every 10 minutes for every mirror. It was a real clever solution borne out of desperation. Before resorting to this, we did try to find some rosin to harden the pitch. Music stores, gymnastic clubs and boat builders were called to no avail. We didn’t have enough time to harden the pitch by cooking it longer either. Extra dowels were procured for Sunday morning. Sunday morning the kids arrived from all over the Big Island of Hawaii, and transported down the hill for their pitch lap. Three at a time, mirrors and tools were placed on a kitchen table, and pitch laps poured, grooves pressed and then cooled.

Then the next three, and the next three. It was an awesome thing to watch! As soon as a carload was full of kids and pitch laps, off we went to the cultural center up the hill. The wooden tables we used so successfully to grind the mirrors the previous Sunday could not be nailed into, to hold the mirror or tool as polishing took place. That was the rule. no nailing on the tables. Again simultaneously, a couple of us figured if we turned the tables upside down, drilled screws into the underside of the table no one would ever know. This worked like a charm, and soon 40 mirrors were being polished. From about 10 am till about 2PM those kids polished their mirrors. It’s very hard work, and they all pooped out. Shoulder massages were given to the sore kids. This should never have been a one day session, but the powers that be over there planned it as the only way to get all these kids from all over the island in one place for the program. So by the end of the day a few mirrors were polished all the way to the edge, a couple mirrors read and fixed but most kids went home with a dowel and a little bag of cerium oxide to polish on their own. Of course to add insult to injury, it clouded up and rained, so we couldnd't have read the mirrors by sun glint on a power pole insulator anyway.

A few kids came over Monday and Tuesday and worked with John. A few additional mirrors were completed before we left for home Wednesday the 23rd.. And plans are underway to have smaller groups of kids get together and finish their mirrors before they are hauled up to the summit of Mauna Kea and coated in the Keck telescope aluminizing chamber.