Has anyone here hand built their own telescope?

I wanted to buy a moderate Dobsonian Newtonian but Ali won't sign off on a 10", and I don't want a 4.5" (under $200). She laughed at my suggestion that we cough up a few extra bucks, and said that I can have a mid sized bucket if I build one myself. The local CC offers a telescope building class but canceled it till next fall. Now plan B is to attend a local Astronomy Club meeting early next month and see if I can find a mentor.

For Christmas Santa is secretly sending me a couple of 10" blanks from e-bay. The cheap non pyrex kind to minimize the financial cost, and keep the project "black budget" in case of a total failure.

She thinks I will lose interest, or the techical difficulties will intimidate me, but she has unwittingly signed off on my do it yourself project which will end costing a little more then what she originally wanted to spend, and I will get a tremendous amount of satisfaction at "first light".

I think she used a kit though.

I kind of limited myself to projecting the sun on the driveway using a magnifying glass.

I never heard of that.

onto a piece of white paper on the ground or on a table,with a hand lens, changing the focus by moving the lens up and down. You'll get a pretty good idea of what a hand lens can do. Possibly you can try a few different ones. There are fairly inexpensive telescopes designed for solar observation and counting of sun spots. Consult Sky & Telescope magazine.

oh wait, you meant an actual telescope.

Nevermind! vbg