Tripod rebirth

As previously mentioned, my good camera tripod toppled over and broke. Since buying a replacement for soemthign missing only a hinge seemed a poor use of funds, I slapped together a fix using some cheapo parts:

1. A door hinge, costing about $3.50
2. A double-tube of plastic bonding epoxy, costing about $4.50
3. A wingnut, costing $.30
4. A bolt costing $.30
5. Six metal screws costing  about $0.13 each

Here is what the broken part of the tripod looked like prior to repairs:

The parts off to the right are the sheared off bits of the hinge.

Here’s the platform placed on the tripod, showing where the hinge should be.

Another view, showing how the parts should go together.

Here’s the new hinge. Note that one  of the loops was cut off. This way, when the wingnut is tightened on the bolt running through the loops, it clamps to two sets of loops against each other.

Here is the hinge in place… plastic bonding epoxy is used to help strengten the screwed-in attachment to the lower part of the tripod, and a big fat blob of the stuff in the empy volume of the upper platform gives the screws something to bit into.  Note that I drilled another screw-hole in the hingeattaching to the lower part of the tripod.

 

Here’s the hinge closed.

It looks kinda pathetic, but so far it seems to hold up well. It’s certainly less expensive than blowing another hundred bucks.