Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8471, and today I am reinforcing my telescope carry bag. Let’s get started!
I got a telescope last Christmas. As part of caring for it, I got it a travel bag to take it to local dark spots. A comment on the bag’s store page recommended reinforcement – possibly with the cardboard box the bag arrived in. I wanted a frame. Metal and wood can be expensive and heavy, so I went with PVC piping. My father and I bought supplies and started the project late January, but time constraints and busy schedules halted progress until now.
We measured the bag as 40”x12”x9”. The store sold half inch diameter pipe in 10 foot/120 inch segments. My intuition said to buy two pipes, but a quick mental estimate came up 4 inches too short: 2x(120-(40+12+9))=-4. Accounting for the diameters of perpendicular segments affords the needed margin: 3x8x.5”-4”=8”.
The base went together nicely, but the bag got really tight once the first two vertical supports went in. News flash: the bag is ever so slightly trapezoidal in shape. When we came back to finish the project this week, we re-measured from the top of the bag, but those measurements would have been too short for the interior dividing wall running lengthwise along the bag. In the end, we trimmed the pipes to fit outside this wall and lowered the height until the bag could zip closed over the frame.
One future improvement remains: my accessories are currently loose in a cardboard box that barely fits in the telescope bag. It stretches the bag, making it difficult to access – especially if I’m after something without pulling out the whole telescope.
Takeaway
This project had an unusually long break in it. While I would have liked a shorter timetable, it is always a risk when working with someone else on a relatively minor project. Our schedules just happened to line up this week well enough to follow through when I pushed a little.
Final Question
What small projects do you have going on that shouldn’t take long to finish? Might now be the time?