The Rocker Box

I decided to make my wooden structures, the rocker box and scope cradle, out of birch plywood. This was the standard veneer finish plywood found at home improvement or hardware stores. The cut edges are sealed with birch veneer to provide a clean finished edge. The veneer does a great job, making the wood look as if it is ine solid piece instaed of plywood.

If I were to give some advice to ATM newbies it would be to buy a plunge router. Lacking a table saw, I made all of my cuts with the router, and cutting a good circle without a router is impossible or extremely hard, depending on how picky you are.

The design of the rocker box is pretty simple, two semicircular cutaways on the box sides for the cradle altitude bearings to sit in, and the bottom consisting of two circular boards with rotation built in for the azimuth bearing.

The contact area of the bearings in both cases is Ebony Star laminate material against Teflon. Most ATMers agree this is the best choice for bearing materials.