OK, finally got some (allthough not much) stuff done on the telescope. My apologies for not posting any progress & being inactive here for a while...
I just started making the ocular, whatever it is called in english. The thing you lppl through. Anyway, could anyone please direct/tell me how to make bumps/dents/scratches on the surface? I tried following the bump-map tutorial (the one in the maya documentation with the dinosaur to paint), but on the render nothing changes, and if I paint normals, It screws everything up...

help me/point me in the right direction please!
:-/