I’ve been working for a year with a busted tripod. The attempt to fix it into functionality is HERE. But while functional, it was seriously flawed; so I finally broke down and bought a new one before this last trip. So I had a busted tripod I had no use for.
Until I came *back* from the trip. I came back with a new part that Made It All Better.
For starters, the busted tripod:
The “head” of the tripod simply unscrews from the tripod itself:
What made the tripod funtional again is that while in Illinois I came into possession of a new head for the tripod. “New” is here used in a rather ironic sense… while I’ve no paperwork on it, this item manufactured by “Zak Engineering” of East Moline, Illinois has a patent number stamped on it: 2424499. This patent was filed by Harry S. Pasturczak in 1945 and granted in 1947, which would date it to the late 1940’s.
It’s a beautiful piece of work. Manufactured largely of aluminum with steel componants (which seem to be coated in zinc chromate), the only non-metallic part is a felt pad and two (paper?) bearings. I partially disassembled it, cleaned it (it needed little cleaning) and oiled the sliding surfaces. It works like a champ: squeeze the trigger on the pistol grip, and it pans and tilts with ease; let up on the trigger and it locks up good and solid. A dial adjusts it so that when the trigger is released it can still easily pan. A knob at the back of the grip adjusted the tension in the system. The pistol grip can yaw 45 degrees or so left and right, and the camera mounting platform can tilt independently. The beauty of that is that it will allow a camera to point straight up… something none of my other tripods have ever permitted.
Luckily, the photographic industry has kept certain standards over the decades: the base of the heads threaded directly onto the tripod… and my Nikon D5000 threads directly onto the mounting platform.
See photos of the restored tripod after the break…
And here it is with the camera attached:
Attempts to learn more about this have so far been unsuccessul. If anyone has any info on it, I’d appreciate hearing about it.
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