Camera tripod extension arm

My oldest grandson, Kobe, has made some amazingly nice woodworking gifts for his family the last few Christmases. He takes a lot of pride in his work and gets so excited about showing off his gifts. I feel the same way every time I finish a project, especially when it is something unique or something that I have found a way to improve on someone else’s idea. Sometimes I feel I spend as much time researching and planning a project and finding parts, as I do actually building it. For this reason, I like to document the steps I make and where to find parts. This is to help other people to save them time and to help with pointers on details of the building process. In doing this I realized it would help me if I made an easily adjustable camera mount to get pictures and videos from all different kinds of angles and elevations. I got the original idea from www.ibuildit.ca I expanded on his idea to make my own model.

I had an old stand from a fan that I rescued from my neighbors garbage (my wife is so proud of me.) Technically this is not a tripod. This works though. I added some heavy 2×4’s for a ballast for a heavier camera.

I wanted to be able to take pictures from above and be able to reach over and take pictures from the side on the workbench so I made a very long arm. A ¾” x 7/8” arm is plenty strong for this

The camera mount is ¾” x 2” x 81/2”. The first thing you want to do is drill the hole all the way through the 2” wide board for the pivoting point. Drill at least a 17/64” hole. I chiseled out a recess for the oblong head on the ¼” T-nut and drilled the hold out to 19/64” for a nice snug fit so the T-nut didn’t have to be glued in. You don’t want too tight a fit or you’ll split the wood, being that close to the end of the board. Now that you’re done hammering on this part it’s safe to cut the 3” slot for the arm.

For the small knob with the ¼-20 stud to attach the camera I recessed a ½” hole 3?8” deep to install a “C- keeper” on the stud so the knob wouldn’t fall out. You could also use a locking nut instead of the C-keeper. The other ½” holes in the camera mount are just for effect to dress it up a little.

#cameratripod #DIYtripod #homemadetripod