TELEVUE DIAGONAL CLEANING...

Well, I took my scope out tonite, and to my surprise it looks as if my diagonal really needs to be cleaned up!
It looked like small black dots scattered all over... weird, but true.

It is a Televue (non-Everbrite) 2" enhanced aluminum. Could it be coating problems?

I'm familiar with cleaning the optics of my scope's corrector plate, and I know that normally you don't need to do it unless it is REALLY dirty, but this is buggin' me! (I still have a bottle of specially made cleaning solution for it)

I tried to clean one of these spots very carefully, and it felt as if it wasn't just dirt, but something stuck on the actual mirror, it felt like a minuscule bump (if you get the idea).

Is there a safe way to clean this? should I take it apart and try?


Thanks for reading this long post,




Clear skies & clean equipment!



Ivan

Ivan, sounds like you have gotten some airborne tree sap on it. Try using pure alcohol and cotton balls with light pressure and see if it cuts though the spots. That stuff is terrible. Also sometimes there are other airborne sticky droplets from god knows where that get on everything. I am starting to believe in bug excretement as a possibility! :^)
Floyd

Hmmm. I started but aborted cleaning my everbright version. I don't know if yours is the same, but it's pretty straight foreward. The base unscrews (4 philips head). Between the base and the section with the big round wholes is a black gasket--make sure it stays around. The mirror lifts out, it's a thick chunk of glass. I started to to use rubbing alcohol dabbing lightly with a q-tip and drapping an old cotton t-shirt to soak it off. No rubbing!

But this seemed to spread the dirt around, so I stopped after a small test run. Televue recommends soaking with acetone, and using a lint-less cotton cloth to very very lightly drab and drab off the acetone. Again, no rubbing, let the chemical action do the work.
Let us know if you have success or problems.
Stevo