How is the telescope mirror made?
You have already hogged the glass out? Use finer and finer abrasives to smooth the glass. Then polish the glass with rouge or cerium oxide. Make a Foucault tester. Then figure the spheroid or paraboloid. Then have it coated with aluminum by a commercial firm or a club. The Washington and the St Petersburg clubs do mirror-coating. The glass, and grinding and polishing materials are sold by Newport Glass Works, Salem, GotGrit, and Willmann-Bell. NGW has some prices at its website. The website also gives some instructions on mirror making. There are about 30 mirror-making groups/classes/workshops. Some are listed at the Stellafane website. There is a telescope making Yahoo! webgroup called “make_your_own_telescope”.
