removing a mirror and recoating

I have heard two different things regarding what to do when removing a mirror from a C14 (or any Celestron SCT)for coating and then replacing it.

One school seems to indicate that you just put it back the way it came out, add some adhesive, and recollimate like usual.

Another school indicates that its a really tough thing to realign the primary and reglue it to the mirror mount before recollimating the secondary.

Can anyone comment on your experiences?

Dan,
My case is extreme, as the scope was apart for 20+years.
My understanding is that you need to get the mirror centered and mounted square on the focus assembly, as this is required to make sure you are hitting the secondary perfectly parallel.
There has been a lot of discussion recently on other sites concerning the centering and rotation aspects of the corrector/secondary assembly.
Per the interviews that Robert Piekiel did with different Celestron folk, there appears to be a need to make sure that everything is rotationally aligned with the alignment marks. It also appears that you need to have the secondary centered on the corrector.

If you do attempt this, document all positions, all shims, measure accurately from centers to edges so that you can make sure you have things placed back correctly.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have sent the scope off to C to have them clean it and redo the optics.

I am still working on aligning my optics, it is not an easy task.


Brian