January 31st, 2026
It was still rather muddy, and I had some maintenance to do with the cows and electric fences that the deer regularly tear up, but after that, I managed to get some work done on the observatory on Saturday.
After the snow melted off the steel plates I’d installed, it was rather amazing to see the rust from where I’d scored the surface through the oil and passivating finish of the steel. Made the marks easier to see!
Pulling out my Harbor Freight “Vulcan” welder on its farm-mobile wagon. The welder is too big for the welder cart I’d bought for it back-when, and the cart wouldn’t travel outside the shop anyway, so I have everything strapped down on a green planter’s wagon I had. Has worked well enough for dragging it around to work on my tractor, etc.
Powering it up by plugging in my uber extension cord and connecting the welder with a short dryer to welder style adapter.
Tacking the four corners of the first post, starting with the tallest corner and then wedging each side up to get the post vertical/level.
Unfortunately, despite getting the post level before welding, the quarter inch steel base plate still bows and flexes enough to vary the post direction quite a bit.
Welding the second post had a similar problem with keeping level. I had to use a different arrangement to make the ground connection since I didn’t have an overhanging tab. Somewhere I have a brand new magnetic ground tab, but I don’t recall where I put it and didn’t want to spend all day finding it!
Give the problem with the stability of the bases, I went ahead and drilled the holes to install corner anchor bolts. That let me pull the East post back perfectly level, although the west one was still a bit off towards the inside due to not having the outer bolt hole.
My phone battery died on me, so I missed some interim shots, but I cut a 188.5″ 2×4 brace and clamped it in place on the first two posts, then ran stringlines to the observatory to ensure that the middle posts lined up properly. These worked out much better with the plates bolted down solidly.
Welding the corners of the last post after lining everything up. These are quite solid with just these welds. I’ll finish the full welds after I get the tops capped (i.e. after the rails are in place). For one thing, I don’t want to risk rain water pooling in the bottom of the post, although it should still drain out through the center hole.
A final shot of all four posts and the temporary brace. Finishing up with a view of the posts with the Moon in the background feels fitting!
And finally, as it got dark, I used the self leveling laser to mark the top of all of the posts so that I can cut them off at the required level. Turns out the far two piers appear to be about half an inch or so shorter.
It’s pretty cool seeing the laser on all the trees!
So hopefully, next weekend I’ll get to put up the first of the rails. I still have some prep work to do at the observatory interface, and I have to figure out how to actually get the 300 lb rails aligned well enough to slide into place without damaging the roof (or myself) in the process! And of course, to top it all off, as I went to move everything out to work on this, I started getting intermittent Error 15s (operator not present) on the tractor so that it wouldn’t move when told to. So now I have to go trace an electrical fault on the seat sensor! UGH! Right now, the tractor is still sitting where you saw it, as it wouldn’t move after I got that rail in place and my attempts to jumper it for a quick fix didn’t work either. I had to haul all my tools back to the shop one by one!
