Great feedback, thanks. I've had experience with large MF cameras, believe it not a Koni Omega Rapid, on the tracking mount and it worked OK. It is much heavier than a 4X5 I'd like to build. Also considered the focusing problem and came up with the same solution as Patrick Robert James suggested. Having some range of focus would be for some daytime use, it wouldn't replace a proper field camera. I had thought about using a metal bodied camera, but I learned from my MF attempts that the metal radiation cools too quickly and dew forms both on the lens and exposed metal. So I home made heated muffs for the lens, battery powered (needed the battery for the tracking table anyway) and it worked great. A wood and fabric (if I make bellows) design I hope will reduce the dew problem.
The challenge to home making I thought would be the rear standard / film holder mount.
For the Perseid shower a few weeks ago I did try to capture meteors using what I had on hand, fresh Fuji 200 colour film, and and Olympus OM-1 The results, well I'm not sure, on a roll of 24 frames each frame exposed for 6 minutes (likely overexposed seeing as the moon was rising and there was aurora coming and going) were not what I hoped for. I didn't have much luck even capturing satellite trails, but there were a couple of frames with something I hadn't seen before. I'd posted a couple of frames here
https://goo.gl/photos/2pVW8Y8vtKDjnRE76 Unfortunately when I shared the photos with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada "Ask and Astronomer" on their website he told me I'd photographed fire flies. Its a good thing he's an astronomer and not an entomologist, I don't believe that there are any fireflies within a couple of thousand miles of here.
Now as to why 4X5 for astrophotography, well I wanted to try it, I like large negatives. I'm not interested in the typical photos, and hardly interested in the common (up here anyway) aurora shots, I'd like to get a few good meteors, and the uncommon noctilucent clouds. Light pillars when its dark, created by ice crystals suspended in the very cold still air. Its and imagined thing, not real at all, but I get a feeling of these magnificent large scale optical delights don't fit on a small frame or digital sensor (to be manipulated digitally later).