I am fortunate to have a 32 cm Dobson mounted Newtonian reflector telescope. After I added some heavy wide field eyepieces to my collection, I started this project with the goal of balancing the scope. I found it straight forward to build a working spring balance system, but also a little more subtle than at first glance.  You can find a short How-To, with analysis of the physics, a numerical model along with some photos and explanation of the system I built, here.