Hi All
its safe to say that classic Pentax refractor telescopes from the 1960s-1980s don’t appear very often on the preowned market at all,and hear! the Pentax J80 is a rarer model and harder to find as not many models was shipped to the UK and my jaw dropped when the seller was only asking £50 for this true classic from the 1980s.I knew what i was getting myself into initially as Facebook market place is not always the best selling platform for purchasing Astronomical related equipment,however as i was collecting the telescope in person anyway it was worth the two hour all round trip.before i pulled the trigger so to speak i asked the owner to forward some other pictures of the most important part the “Objective lens” and was not disappointed and appeared very clean and free! from any scratch’s,mould,or fungal growth.
I was aware there was some other minor issues with the OTA! like some small paint chips on the tube and dew sheild but nothing of major concern.As expected there was some mild rust marks on the hardware which i cleaned and polished also the tripod was a little bit worse for ware!.
Firstly I must admit that the Japanese really are the king of the hill when it comes to optics but there finishing has not always been the best and the tripod was a off brown colour and was showing some bald bare! wood patches anyway.I can truly relate that each and everyone of us has different tastes and personal preferences so I decided to completely overhaul and restore the tripod legs and braces etc!.
Anyway several hours later after stripping the tripod legs into separate components i decided to sand the tripod legs to bare! wood again then cleaned and stained with a red mahogany dye and I’m very pleased with the end results.the accessory tray and braces,struts all have been sanded down with wet and dry sand paper and painted with matt black spray paint.I haven’t tested the optics yet as I’m waiting for a new 0.965” to 1.25” diagonal to arrive which hopefully will be very soon.
