| Blog series by CaptainSkully | updated 5 days ago | 4 parts | 1086 reads | 10 comments total |
Part 1: Day 1: No Rush...
I have a buddy who won a sailboat charter in the British Virgin Islands. I started off promising him to teach him how to sail well enough to go on his own. Long story short, we ended up chartering a sailboat too. The other night (over a few adult beverages), he said he wanted to build a camera kite. For those of you that don’t know what the heck he’s talking about, it’s a contraption that allows you to literally fly your expensive, digital camera, usually over the Pacifi...
Part 2: Reel Pressure...
I glued up the blanks for the second reel this morning, hoping they would be ready to cut out this afternoon. They were. I used the first set as a router template, which worked pretty well. I also pushed everything through the planer to thin it down. The spool parts were a bit hefty for the frame. Then I made what are called Brooxes Hangups. They use friction to keep the camera rig attached to the kite string. Keep in mind this is 100 pound test, so it’s not exactly your stand...
Part 3: A Day's Progress...
I finally got another day in the shop. We’re starting to run out of time. We leave in two weeks for the BVI and I’ve got sailing lessons almost every day until then. Regardless, we ran over to Rockler to get some knobs early in the morning (I gave my lathe to my buddy Eric when we moved to CA). We got back and made some progress: ^ Here’s the reel assembly put together with the hardware and knobs. Notice the knobs give you two options, slow, with torque, or fast...
Part 4: Almost Done!
I was able to squeeze another day in the shop. We started out by finishing up the parallel linkage with the barrel bolts we got from the hardware store. Then we fabricated the Brooxe hanger and the camera enclosure mount. Finally, it was time for the handles. ^ Handles installed on the reel assembly ^ Camera enclosure mounted on the bottom of the parallel linkage ^ Brooxe hanger showing how kite string winds around the “mushrooms” in the top member of the parallel l...
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