The owner before me had posted that the mirror was an 8" f/8 and was signed "J. Ballas 1/58 F.L. 63 1/4” At the time no one knew of a J. Ballas. Has this changed? Is there a way to research membership in the astronomy clubs in that area from the late 50's?

My personal hope was that Mr. Ballas was a long forgotten optician who worked for Tom Cave. Alas, that's probably not the case. The mirrors needed recoating and I sent them to Cary at Optic Wave Labs. Cary tested the primary and reported that overall smoothness was good but it had a turned down edge and a Strehl ratio of .858. Cary refigured the mirror at my request and it is now 1/12 wave with a Strehl of .98! The guy is an artist!

So my working hypothesis is that J. Ballas was an amateur who ground his own mirror and commissioned Bill Schaefer to build a telescope around it. I wouldn't think a commercial optics producer would have sold Bill a mirror with a turned edge. What do you think?

The pier and legs are obviously Cave. It appears the tube is as well (or Parks) with a lovely riveted aluminum trim ring on top. See the thread on the 1952 Cave here http://tinyurl.com/kqgonl