Star D Tripod Leg Repair

This is the brand my father owned. Mine came from a thrift store. I was asked to illustrate the repair of the leg lock mechanism so here it is.

The leg in question did not lock. I gave instructions, but only tried the temporary cardboard fix. Here I take my own advice and use the lid of a Chinese food container to make a new washer for the mechanism. My bet is you can get something at a hardware store that will do the trick, but if you have this at home. the fix is cost and relatively frustration free.

First remove the locking ring – you don’t have to take the leg off to do it, just unscrew it until it slides off the bottom. If you do this with a mechanism that works you should see a plastic split ring inside. The white arrow shows the original position of the ring.

To make a new one, I used the lid of a plastic Chinese food container. I measured the ring and got 5.2 cm long X 1 cm wide. The initial fit was bad (see below, lower right inset) – the gap you see in the original ring needs to be there to allow the mechanism to tighten it around the leg. I trimmed it to 4.8 cm.

The plastic ring needs to go on first (see below, upper left inset). Then the metal ring went on and I tightened it so that the plastic went back into the bottom of the metal ring.

Trial and error taught me that I needed to be careful installing the new part since it doesn’t curve like the original. The first two tries resulted in the plastic getting caught between the two legs (see below, lower left). I held the plastic with my fingers but I imagine you could use tape to hold it in the right place.

This fix worked perfectly – the ring locked the leg tight and withstood me leaning my weight on it. If I were doing this for myself I would make two, because if you need to take the ring off at any time, it might be easier to replace with a new one.

Star D Davidson Tripod fix

This was my tax refund gift to myself. I used most of my refund to pay bills. But I went shopping at the local thrift store and bought a couple of projects so I could say that I had gotten something for myself.

The tripod is a Davidson Star D – clunky, heavy, vintage  piece of heaven with adjustable legs, a panning/tilt head and height adjustment – all with flip locks. This one didn’t work in the store – how could I resist? Not to mention the reasonable $8.98 price tag. $4.99 at ebay, but I would have had to bid on it and pay shipping.

Five minutes after getting it home it was dismantled and two fat pieces of rubberband removed from the works. It still didn’t work because I forgot to re-set one of the flip locks. After the re-assembly was complete, it worked like a dream. A great alternative to my Japanese tripod which is portable, durable (metal) and light. Light means that Mr. Ham Hands (that would be me) knocks it over too easily.

The Davidson won’t fall in a storm. Needless to say, I am happy.

Expect an edit for more later about the actual process – there was one step – removing the legs – that was a little tricky. I will have pics too. Any questions, feel free to ask!

Quick Fixes

Coming soon (again) – these are fixes already done – I am behind on blogging things.

Lights go out when it’s cold, washing machine stopped on spin cycle – it was “sort of” the lid; 1999 toyota camry headlights went out one by one (fuses), broken tripod (loose parts), sparking microwave (condensation), coffemaker cleaning (oxygen bleach).

Fix it fails: build your own digital antenna.