A simple dolly for moving a Dobsonian telescope from the garage or shed

Reader Pete suggested I write up something about my dob dolly pictured in the post on making the heavy 10-inch Dobsonian telescope more easily transportable. A dolly or hand truck is useful if you are using a heavy telescope at home or next to where it is stored, versus disassembling it and moving it by hand or transporting it to a dark sky site.

My home is around Bortle 8 (badly light polluted), but I still like to get the 10-inch dob out sometimes because it shows more in a light polluted sky than either my 4.5 inch or my new 6-inch reflector. So rather than heft the base and tube out onto the driveway every time I want to observe, I built a crude but effective flat dolly for it, as detailed below.

Option 1: buy a hand truck

If you don’t want to build a little dolly, you can simply buy a hand truck such as this one at Harbor Freight for somewhere between $50 and $100 and make a few minor modification to carry your Dobsonian. Usually this involves adding a plywood piece to make the toeplate larger (the flat part that the object sits on), adding padding for the scope tube about halfway up the frame, and a strap to hold the scope tube to the hand truck. 

In fact, this is what I am recommending for my brother who has a 6-inch Orion SkyQuest XT6. The scope is not very heavy, 31.5 lbs. total, but to get to a decent park in the city to observe he has to tote it about six blocks (he doesn't drive). Ugh. So a hand truck makes sense for him. Here’s a Cloudy Nights post that might give you some ideas.

Another advantage of a hand truck is that it's very useful around the house (toting bags of yard waste around, moving furniture, etc.).

Option 2: build a flat rolling dolly

Here’s how I built a very simple but also very crude rolling dolly for my 10-inch Dobsonian. Caveat- there are no handles, so I just push and pull on the scope base to move it. Also, mine has front and rear wheels that are different sizes because my driveway is on a three percent slope. This makes it level without any further adjustment so I can use my azimuth circle/digital angle gauge setup to find objects. Using a hand truck in this case would involve too much fuss and potential trouble. If your driveway or path is level or if you don’t need the scope to be level, you can use the same size wheels. If your driveway or path is not paved, or if you have to negotiate steps or anything taller than an inch or so, you are probably better off with a hand truck with 6” or larger wheels.

I had some scrap pieces of 5/8” roof sheathing plywood leftover from a roofing job. (Always see what your workers are throwing away and ask them to save it if you might find it useful.) The base of my 10-inch is a 22” diameter circle, so the dimensions are optimized for that.

I cut a 22” x 26” rectangle from the plywood. The extra 2 inches in front and back provide room to fasten the wheels on without getting in the way of the feet on the scope base or having the bolts sticking out and scraping the base.

I needed the front of the dolly to be 1” higher than the back to compensate for my sloped driveway. I bought a pair of 3” rubber rigid casters and a pair of 2” rubber swivel casters at Harbor Freight. These are 3-5/8” and 2-5/8” high, respectively, which gave me the just about the right adjustment for my sloped driveway. I thought about getting casters with brake levers on them, but these aren't strong enough to hold anything on a slope, just keep it from rolling on a level floor. The casters bolt through the plywood with four bolts each. You’ll need a drill and a pair of wrenches. Make sure you buy bolts that fit the caster holes.

I was able to put the nuts on the bottom of the fixed casters, but the swivel casters were smaller and the threaded bolt ends sticking up would have prevented them from swiveling, so I had to have them sticking up on the upper side of the plywood. It’s not optimal, but that’s what I had to do.

With an azimuth circle on the dob base, I wanted to make it easy to align with the cardinal directions, so I put a mark on the dob ground board that would align with a mark on the dolly to position the base so it would be roughly aligned in azimuth and I would just need to fine tune it each session.

I put the scope base where I would be placing it on the plywood and painted a white circle all the way around on the dolly’s surface to help me align it when plunking it down. 

To keep the base from sliding around, because I would be pushing and pulling it, I glued pieces of wood just outside each dob foot. Normally dobs have three feet, but I found adding three more feet from wood made it more stable on uneven ground, so I have six little pieces of wood glued to the dolly. Just make sure they are shorter than the dob feet so they don’t touch the ground board.

That’s pretty much it. I didn’t even waste paint on it, since it will be spending most of the time in my garage, and paint is often one of the more costly parts of any woodworking project.

So how well does it work?

My only real complaint is that it’s a little hard to maneuver with the two swivel wheels, so I just have to go slowly when pulling/pushing it in and out of the garage. To keep the scope from rolling down into the street, I use a rubber wheel chock from Harbor Freight and a rubber sanding block under each front wheel. If you use something different, make sure it's not going to just slide down the slope. I always stand on the downhill side of the scope when rolling it to and from the driveway.

If you have to roll the scope over a threshold, for example I have a 1” bump from my driveway into the garage, use a piece of baseboard molding a bit longer than the width of the dolly. It has a tapered profile that works nicely as a little ramp. Tip: Save some pieces of any molding you replace. I’ve found multiple uses for this.

Just be aware that you’ll be adding about 4” or so to the height of the eyepiece when observing. Even my adjustable observing chair needs a booster cushion at its highest adjustment for some positions when the scope is on the dolly. I don’t notice any instability or shaking in the views from being on the dolly.

If you have a telescope on a heavy tripod and mount and want to build a dolly, here's an article from BBC Sky at Night that might give you some ideas.

Bonus Tip: If you have a store like Harbor Freight or Northern Tool near you, or can order from one, you can save a lot of money on many items, including tools that you’ll only use occasionally. Better to have the right cheap tool than the wrong high quality tool. I don’t have any affiliation with them, I just like to save money if I can.