[dplavery92]

I'll glom on this only to add that while building your own reflecting telescope is valuable as a fun project or an educational exercise, you are unlikely to save much (if any) money doing it. A lot of John Dobson's "Sidewalk Astronomer" guidance comes from a time in Southern California where it was easy to find discarded porthole glass for free to grind into a mirror blank and when hardware shops would hand out teflon samples for free. Even finding the correct cardboard "sonotubes" can be a little tricky these days, and you're likely to blow out the price of an Orion or Apertura procuring a mirror (or sourcing the glass and getting it silvered.)

I hope that doesn't deter the "makers" among you from building a Dobsonian for the experience of it all, but if you want to get from zero to observing as cheaply as possible these days, you're probably better off just buying a Dobsonian similar to the one the parent comment linked.