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Show Boy, 14, Makes Telescone I BY ROY L. WARREN pOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Lyle B. Jhiggett, ' Jr., worked on a "chunk of glass" for a year before it was ready to enter the Youth Talent Exposition held at Battle Creek, Mich. The "chunk of glass" went into a six-Inch reflector telescope as the circular mirror and there was ' a lot of painstaking work before forth over the sharp abrasive, hollowing out the bottom surface of the reflector. As he rubbed the top piece of glass over the other he had to revolve it one way and move himself around the table in the opposite direction. That prevented pre-vented any uneven wear on either the tool or the reflector. If that makes your back ache, consider the fact that this is only the start. Next comes finer and finer abrasives to smooth out the rough grinding. Then there's the polishing, with pitch poured over the tool and a paste of jeweler's rouge applied to the reflector. More rubbing. Then checking against a template to see how far off the curve is and more rubbing. the project was completed. fcf? 'I The telescope, when com- J,X J pleted, was not just a casual p JL toy. This keen- . eyed young 4g man was a par- - J ticipating mem- J ber in the Bat- CatJ tie Creek Amateur Ama-teur Astronomy LJ'Ie "ussett club. After completion of the instrument, in-strument, Lyle had the rheans of examining the universe from his own back yard. Large, scientifically constructed telescopes are expensive to buy. They may be built at home for much less in terms of money. But they are costly in spare time, pluck and elbow grease. 'J'O make his reflector Lyle used a thick, molded disc of special glass which he converted into a highly polished mirror with a surface sur-face curved just so. It reflects the light from the stars back to an eyepiece and concentrates the rays so they will be in focus at exactly the right distance. A disc of plate glass with a convex-curved surface was the "tool" used to put the curve in the reflector. To do that job Lyle used seven different grades of abrasive granules and powder, black pitch and some jeweler's rouge. Lyle mounted his plate-glass tool on a small table. He started by pouring some of the abrasive on it. Then the reflector glass was placed on top and the work began. He rubbed the reflector back and |