Sawed off tripod?

S_V wrote:

Hello,

To make a long story short, after continued frustrations with using my gorilla pod (too short and/or can’t find a place to mount it) I decided to look for a really compact tripod I could take with me when I travel that would have a really small footprint. Now quality aside, I came across a Q166C on ebay. I found that tripod design sort of interesting but there are some things I would like to change (perhaps an inch or two longer legs, lever locks and a longer, two piece center column. )

I’m wondering about sourcing a tripod designed the way I would like it and just cutting it down to the size I want.

Has anyone used a hacksaw to their tripod?

Looking at my own tripod I have at home (which I would not cut – I would buy something else), I suspect the approach I would take would be to cut all three legs off from the main tripod base using a rotary tool or angle grinder with a cutting blade. Once those are off and trimmed to my custom size, I suspect the more difficult part would be to remove the left over pieces from the tripod base. I suspect mine are glued in there. I could try wrenching them loose using a vice and wrench but I’m guessing I would need to get in there with a rotary tool in order to remove everything. Then just glue the legs back in the hole. Same idea for the center column…

Has anyone every tried this? Is this feasible or a likely failure?

More likely guaranteed failure.  You are cutting the wrong ends of the tubing.

If you took you tripod legs apart, you would see that the end to cut would be the "bottom" end, not the top end.  Remove the rubber foot and leg locks; you then have 4 leg sections.  The "top" end of the interior tubes will have a stop to keep the legs from falling out when adjusting length.  Cut the other end (bottom end) to desired size and then reassemble.

Then you need to cut the center column, again at the bottom.  You will lose the weight hook, although you might be able to tear down the cut off part to salvage the insert and glue it back into the shortened column.  Depends on how it's constructed, and you won't know until you destroy it.

I have done this sort of shortening with a number of collapsible devices.

Whether it is worthwhile?  Depends a lot on how short you want it to collapse to versus how tall it should expand to.

If you want to shorten it to 13" (from 17.5"), you need to shorten the main leg section by 4.5".  The other leg sections might not need to be shortened as much, you might be able to shorten them by less.  Depends on the tripod design.  If the leg sections are longer as you go down (common with short travel tripods), then you will have to shorten each of them by nearly that amount.  On a 4-section tripod, that means you lose 18" in extended height.  Same with the center column.  So a total loss of 22.5"  The Zomei would go from 62.5" max height to 40".  If that's a workable height for you, then saw away!

A tip on sawing: use a section of PVC tubing as a saw guide.  It should be short enough so that only the cylindar of the item to be cut is within the tube.  Cut a notch off each end of the tube, clamp the leg section or center column in the tube, and cut off at the other end using the tube as a guide.

OR, you could get a compact travel tripod like the Sirui T025x (folded length 12.2").