Rookie Collimation Nightmares

Hey all, I have an older 4.5" Meade Newtonian that I've been playing with for a few months with some "wow's" and some frustration. I removed the focuser once for adjustments and removed the secondary in order to do this. Since then, it seems the alignment of the optics is impossible to correct. I took it to the local club (Atlanta) and some really nice people put a laser device in it, twisted things around for a while and finally said "It's not perfect, but much better." I agreed when I used it. Another night some other guy (who seemed to know what he was doing) put Sirius in it and unfocused it, and scoffed saying how terrible it was. By the time I was done adjusting the primary as he looked through the eyepiece trying to "help" me, things were even worse... HELP ME! How can I do something without expensive collimating equipment? I may switch to a refractor one day and don't wanna spend the $100+ to have it become obsolete. I really want it perfect so I can appreciate what my 'lil scope is capable of.
Thanx - Ken

Borrow someones tectron collimation tools and booklet. The booklet is very important as it explains all the details of collimation. Each step must be followed in sequence to achieve collimation or to troubleshoot what is causing the headaches. Sometimes an out of square focuser can cause much of the problem. You can also make a sight tube out of a plastic film canister for rough centering of the secondary, but a real sight tube with crosshairs is much better. Bear in mind that a simple dot laser is no substitute for the sight tube, IMHO. You can do decent collimation of the secondary and primary with the crosshair sight tube and then fine tune the primary with a cheshire, it may take several iterations to get it right. the sight tube cheshire and booklet are fairly inexpensive and you would also be able to use the cheshire to collimate a refractor. Once you have decent collimation you can fine tune the primary with a star test. Hope this helps.

As a refractor user and having gone through the fiery collimation with my Dob, I can sympathize with you, Ken. I printed out various pictures and instructions and still couldn't get it right (not a handiman I suppose). I have only one suggestion: get someone to help if you can. I was fortunate enough to have experts like Jon to help me and he showed many tricks. Now I was even brave enough to remove my primary to brush away the dust and put it back and collimate again without any first day torture. The reward of crisp and razor sharp planetary view was well worth the lesson.

Ron B[ee]