[wurly]

Hollywood Steve: I was unaware of steel stands for lighting and photography. Do they have tripod bases? It sounds like your stand will not suffer the indignity of constant thread failure.

Alphajerk: As for sixth and seventh grade physics, it really is that simple...it's the damned execution that's so darn hard. Much turning of parts. Milling, drilling, tapping, threading, welding, sandblasting, plating, polishing etc. Half of the problem is teaching people skilled in metalwork and casting what the actual needs of us gearsluts are.

Finding telescoping tubes is not easy. They're not at the hardware store, and your local steel supplier won't have them either. And they're not just pipes, they're DOM (drawn over mandrel) to make the inside of the tube smooth and uniform. There is only a few places in the USA that sell the stuff.

Suffice it to say that the amount of physics in this project could be handled by a 12 or 13 year old, but I doubt that they would have the perseverence, desire and life experience to pull it off.

If I had known how tough it is I wouldn't have started this project, but now I'm soooo close.

And Alphajerk, please stop speculating about about different methods of clamping and tightening. Your common sense and logic only makes people realize how mechanically bankrupt most stands really are.

wurly

still tilting at windmills