Well, a progress update:
Monday evening I went over to my friend's place, armed with the taps,
and aluminum strip and the bolts and nuts that Piers sent. As a
surprise to me, my friend told me that the tap should actually have
come in three separate stages (i.e. three taps) and I only had numbers
1 and 2 (I had noticed that one looked more blunt, but just figured it
to perhaps be a worn one). Nonetheless, we went ahead and tapped out
the first two stages. As the aluminium is relatively soft and the
steel bolts (which are sharp enough) is not, I opted to try and see if
they would screw in, effectively forming the third tapping stage. This
worked a charm, with a small "adjustable wrench" (called "bako" over
here, but what are those called in English?) the proper amount of
torque could be applied in a controlled fashion to force them through.
After a bit, they went through easily. :)
The strips now mount fine directly onto the tripod head screw thread
(hence not requiring a fixation nut on top of it) and on the 'flash
end' of them, the bolts could easily be screwed through, right up to
the desired length, again, without requiring nuts to fix them in their
positions. This works pretty nicely, and I did already mount the
brolly boxes (presently without flashes) and the inclination now seems
to be much better.
Then.... this is as far as I got. It will most likely not be before
Saturday that I _may_ get a chance at taking some pictures (unless I
can find a small speck of time before then).
Also, when I was at my friend's place, we took a look at fixing the
two broken tripods too. One of them had the securing screw that fixes
the camera-base plate missing. Dangerous, as inclining the mounted
gear forwards could cause it to have the gear fall out (don't ask
about the dent in my 50/3.5 lens ring, grrr). Needlessly to say, the
big plastic screw thread was also not metric (<sigh> when will we have
ONE unified system worldwide? whichever it is...), so the search was
on for the proper thread. M10 and M12 didn't do it, but my friend
still had some specials nuts that are in non-metric size. Those
included some big ones for gas pipelines. The thread fitted! The outer
part of the nut itself didn't enter the round shaped surrounding part
of the thread, but my friend fixed that with his lathe; he turned the
nut until the outer part was nicely rounded and entered. The 'locking'
ability in different angles is now gone (although this could probably
be enabled again using some big washers), but at least the camera will
not fall out of it anymore.
The other tripod proved to be more of a challenge: the "turn-handle"
that is used for loosening/tightening the inclination of the tripod
head was broken off in such a way that a part of the thread still
remained inside the tripod head. Unfortunatly this is stuck in a loose
metal part, and try as we might, we could not drill a small hole in
the remnants of the thread... In fact, the drill couldn't even get
enough grip to fully drill it out. Unless anyone knows how the head
can be opened (and re-asssembled!) I may have to resort to glueing it
in one fixed position, as the tripod head now keeps tilting forward
under the weight; making it pretty useless (and it's only intended use
is as a lightstand anyway).
Cheers,
Olafo
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