2008 LFPF thread
What Vibration Does A Wood Tripod Dampen And Why Does It Matter?
2008 LFPF thread
What Vibration Does A Wood Tripod Dampen And Why Does It Matter?
Tin Can
Lloyd you beauty, that is exactly what I was hoping for, thank you!Originally Posted by lloyd
from Mark Sawyer
At my age, I'm wondering whether a balsa wood tripod would work...
Why not? ;-) The legendary WW-II fighter/bomber De Havilland Mosquito was made of balsa wood!
(ahem ... and spruce, and and birch plywood, and walnut ...)
Lighter than a similar plane made of metal!
I built a wooden tripod some years ago.
https://lgiancri.altervista.org/blog...camera/tripod/
It seemed quite alright, but when I did what Ansel Adams suggested in his book (catch the head of the tripod and try to twist it) I found that it was not sturdy. It was difficult to build a connection between legs and head, the 8x10 wooden cameras I built are rather heavy and the thing isn't steady at all.
Doing it right is harder than you might think. Unless fiberglass-clad, lots of wood legs get stuck when swollen with water or frozen. Better survey tripods are fiberglass-clad over poplar, giving them light weight but waterproofing too. Survey tripods with platform tops are very easy to convert to view camera use - just replace the 5/8-11 turnbolt with a 3/8-16 one. Maple is used for Ries tripods, the most reputable brand. High quality mahogany would also work. But ash would be best if you can find good blemish-free stock well-cured.
The whole point of a hardwood tripod is bully mass and weight, making things more stable and vibration-resistant. Use penetrating marine sealants like wooden yachts do, not a top-layer varnish. Stainless spike feet are also useful.
If you can find wooden crutches they can be turned into a tripod. I don't have the pictures on this computer. It is fairly light, but not as easy to use as "real" tripods. Like the hockey stick suggestion, the crutches are plywood. And, like someone suggested getting the legs attached to the head is an issue. There's a reason the Ries people use a custom aluminum casting to be the center of the tripod and use metal bracing/adjusting. Wood is good for a lot of things but metal and composites and plywood are better for a lot of things.
For dimensional stability how the wood is sawn matters, too, I believe that quarter sawn wood is best. I have a quarter sawn cherry plank that'd make a great tripod, but I'm not sure I need another tripod so it sits in the garage waiting for other inspiration, possibly a ULF camera (which would also tend to necessitate a new tripod or two and film holders which is more than 1 plank can do).
BTW softwoods "move" less with changes in humidity.
As long as you are not trying to do seismology or something I'd think most woods would be fine---walnut, ash, oak are more naturally porous, beech, birch, maple, and cherry are less porous. Poplar is starting to get rather soft, but is widely available. That list is for north America. I don't know what's common in the rest of the world, the Aussies have some really different species from what I've heard.
One of the less described features of the De Haviland Mosquito was its low radar return. The Germans had night fighters with radar as early as 1942.
I fear a lot of these tests just are done to proof whatever is wanted to be proven. I do have a wooden Berlebach but honestly, I don't trust it to hold a Minox. Those clamps on the legs are just not to be trusted, the legs are far from stable and other issues. Any decent metal tripod will put it to shame. I have a serious feeling that most of those qualities of wooden tripods are ascribed to them to make the buyers feel better about it, that they have something less common, more expensive and thus better.
Like "damping is better with wood". Maybe, but not getting any vibration in it would be better. For same stiffness, weight will be very similar for most common materials. Unless you go to very exotic stuff like berylium. "Putting you finger on it will let you feel it"... of course, but can you consistently put your finger in the same way? At the same place? At the same nodal point? Do you know if you are in a nodal point? Are you not feeling the vibrations you put into it? All a bit too much voodoo for me.
More importantly, they had a lot of woodworking people without work and a lot of wood as metal was used for other purposes. If you then have someone around that can design a good plane with those materials you are good to go.
Expert in non-working solutions.
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