Make Barn Door Tracker

First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge.

Make barn door tracker.

A barn door tracker also known as haig or scotch mount is a camera mount used to take long exposure photographs of the night sky without the star trails caused by the rotation of the earth. We bought everything from the home depot. The mount shown here employs a type 4 double arm design. By 2 inch steel flat plates 13 99 each four 1 1 2 inch steel spacers about 6 two 4 inch pulleys 4 78 each four 1 inch fender washers.

Create your own barn door track hardware. Insert the t nut from the top side of the board and pound in with a hammer drill another hole in the very center of the board for another t nut. This sliding door track can be made for under 100 including wooden wheels track the ebook available in the blog post provides a full list of the tools and supplies you ll need. The double arm design was first described in an article by dave trott published in the february 1988 issue of sky telescope magazine.

Pound in the t nut with a hammer. Drill a hole just big enough to allow the insertion of the t nut. Two nylon locking nuts. Here s what you need to make a diy barn door track like ours.

A followup appeared in the april 1989 issue. Making the hangers and door stops. Barn door track diy tutorial. This will allow you to hook up the tripod to the tracker.

Make sure everything is square and moves freely clap the 2 hinged boards together and shout action a few times like they do when making movies if it makes a nice clack sound it should work well for a star tracker now measure 228 55mm from the center of the hinge pin down the middle of the board and mark the drive rod holes do this on.