A pipe mount is a German equatorial mount built with plumbing supplies. It has the following advantages:

Strength. Steel pipe works best for this type of mount. Steel pipe just an inch and a half in diameter will hold a twenty-pound load with great sturdiness. Choosing larger pipes allows mounting even bigger loads.

Ease of construction. If you can screw a pipe into a pipe joint, you can build this mount. No machining or special tools are required.

Polar Coordinate Operation. The earth moves around a central axis. So does this mount. As with any German equatorial mount, if it is properly polar aligned, you only have to move your telescope in right ascension, the same way the earth moves. Alt-azimuth mounts work in rectangular coordinates, so to track an object in the sky requires moving your telescope in both axes, altitude and azimuth.

Cost. Steel pipe is cheap and easy to find. If you have access to surplus pipe, then it costs next to nothing. A mount using new, inch and a half diameter steel pipe should cost around $30.

The pipe mount design also has the following drawbacks:

Vibration. Steel pipe is strong, but it does not dampen vibration as well as other materials. To overcome this, you may need to use increasingly larger diameters of pipe.

Polar shaft. A German mount works because it mimics the Earth’s rotation around its axis. The mount turns around its axis, which is aligned with the Earth’s axis. The axis is a pipe the mount turns around is known as the "polar shaft" because it aligns itself with the Earth’s axis by pointing at the celestial pole for your hemisphere. The angle the polar axis has to subtend to point at the pole is your latitude. Steel pipe does not come pre-bent in any angle you wish. You either have to bend a pipe for the polar shaft to match your latitude, or be lucky enough to live at a latitude that matches the stock pipe elbows. Fortunately for people living in Minneapolis and St. Paul, our latitude is very near 45 degrees, a standard angle bend for elbow pipes.

Does not track. People generally think of German equatorial mounts as tracking mounts. However, it would be very difficult and expensive to put motors on a pipe mount for the purposes of tracking. A pipe mount is sturdy, but is in no way as accurate in tracking objects as a professionally machined mount, so please do not plan to upgrade your mount to do any sort of motor assisted tracking.

Need for tripod or pier. A pipe mount is sturdy, cheap, and a snap to build. However, you have to attach it to something before you can mount an astronomical instrument with it. You may consider a tripod (maybe also made of pipes), a pier made from a large pipe driven into the ground, or a commercially made wood or aluminum tripod. Many amateurs make tripods from old crutches, or 2 x 4 studs. Bear in mind that your tripod will need to hold the weight of your telescope, plus the steel pipes of the mount, plus a counterweight. As an example, a forty pound telescope could easily add up to seventy pounds or more when you factor in the weight of the pipes and counterweight. You cannot get by with a flimsy tripod or pier. This really is the practical "gotcha" with a German mount. Imagine trying to mount a 200 or 300 pound telescope, something the size of a large Dobsonian mounted, Newtonian telescope. Your mount, tripod, and counterweight combination would probably weigh much more than the telescope itself. Who would want to tear down and setup a 600 pound telescope and mount out in the field? This is why large German mounts usually find homes in observatories and also why the Dobsonian alt-az mount has revolutionized large aperture telescope usage in the amateur astronomy community.

Before starting, you should gather up all the parts. Look at the pipe mount diagram and the parts list below for ideas:

Assembly is pretty simple. Simply screw the pipe parts together. This is one thing to be aware of, though. American threaded pipes ends are conical in shape. This makes them seal better when attached to other pipes. However, this is inconvenient for our purposes. We need the pipes to move around snugly, but not lock up. One way to do this is put plastic wrap on the pipe threads that will be moving. There are just two "bearing" joints in a pipe mount. One is between the floor flange on the telescope mounting plate and the pipe nipple that connects it to the tee connector. The other joint is the connection between the other pipe nipple connected to the tee connector.

One huge omission I made with this project is connecting the mount to a tripod or pier. This is something you will have to design yourself. Many people have used old crutches or just plain two by four lumber to create very strong tripods with which to support the pipe mount and telescope combination.

Once assembled, counter balance your scope in right ascension by putting weights on the end of the long pipe (counterweight shaft). Barbell weights work well. Attach your telescope to the telescope mounting plate by whatever means you choose (straps or rings) and balance the telescope with the counterweights by adding or subtracting weights, as necessary, or by moving the counterweights up and down the counterweight shaft. Secure the weights with hose clamps screwed onto both ends of the counterweights on the counterweight shaft. Balance your telescope in declination by turning the mount in right ascension so that the telescope and the counterweights are both level with the ground. Move your telescope up or down the mounting plate until the declination axis no longer turns.

Good luck, and by all means, please make whatever changes you feel are necessary to make this project work for you.