New Ries tripod with custom wood (Sapele)

[dsim]

Here´s two more pictures of the tripod working in the field..

Sweet

[C. D. Keth]

What's the reason for the custom wood? Does it add something to the function of the tripod?

[Vaughn]

What's the reason for the custom wood? Does it add something to the function of the tripod?

See post #5...

[Drew Wiley]

Looks lovely, but hope the finish doesn't fail. With that kind of wood, a good teak oil would
be vastly preferable to a surface coating, which will inevitably peel - it certainly does on
their maple tripods (not that I care - my Ries takes a beating). Hope they make more of those beauties!

[Ron Bose]

The Sapele version looks gorgeous !

[goamules]

Will, the quality of the sapele wood is comparable to the hardrock maple. I wanted something to match my mahogany camera and Ries offered to make me this one because they were testing wood options at the time I contacted them.

Actually, Sapele is related to mahogany (It's in the same family). Mahogany or Sapele make very nice furniture and guitars, and their color is what you see; nice medium dark reddish brown. A little oxidizer and it gets even darker, and will never change colors. Maple is often shockingly white, and very heavy.

[john biskupski]

Ries's new website introduces four new tropical hardwood wood types, in addition to the traditional Maple - Araranga (like Berlebach's nut brown), Babinge, Jatoba, and the Sapelle shown above. They all look great, but at quite a price, take a look at the site, they've done a good job updating it.

[Leszek Vogt]

I don't recall handling sapelle lately, but always thought it was denser than maple. Bubinga is one of the densest woods....right up there with ebony and lignum vitea, that they make mallets out of. That will be one hefty tripod...sort of like the surveyor's type. I'll keep my fiber carbon. Agree, that is one cool looking tripod.

Les

[kameraobskura]

Thanks all! Im still very happy with my tripod and everyone who sees is always get baffled when I tell them it´s brand new. When I bought mine and didn´t know anything about Sapele Ries told me it´s african mahoganey.