610 days ago
by tpastore |
20 comments »
Hello fellow woodworkers,
I have enjoyed looking at all of the excellent projects displayed on LJ. They inspire designs and urge me to make that next piece even even more challenging. All these project are shown to the world via pictures. A picture is your way of expressing the time and effort you have spent on a piece. It is important to take time on the composition and setup of your picture taking to optimize the quality of your pictures. After all, you have spent countless hours wo...
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616 days ago
by Don Kondra |
10 comments »
Greetings,
Some background first, some of this information was included in a recent post but for those of you that missed it I’ll start from the beginning :)
Until recently I was having my pieces shot by a professional. He moved, sigh…
For archive type shots I was using a Kodak 2 mp P&S. For web stuff it worked fine and I even had an image printed in Fine Woodworking’s Readers Gallery. They must have REALLY liked the piece :)
I never liked the idea of the ...
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14 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
5 comments »
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...
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25 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
2 comments »
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...
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29 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
2 comments »
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...
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451 days ago
by Don Kondra |
15 comments »
Greetings,
I haven’t been making much sawdust lately, last Wednesday I had a carpal tunnel release so it shouldn’t be long before i’m back in the shop.
While I’ve been down I’ve been setting up to do product photography as a slde line and thought I would share some of my latest results.
First the fun stuff, I finally got around to hanging a bird feeder just in front of the patio door. I’ve set the camera on a tripod and sure enough, within days I ...
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1 day ago
by CaptainSkully |
3 comments »
Here’s the kitecam footage with a little background music. If you want a funnier/naughtier version, browse to YouTube by clicking the link at the bottom right and look at our other videos (Warning: Explicit). Remember, I warned you. Little pitchers…
We’re flying to the British Virgin Islands tonight! I’ll post some more video of exotic locales. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow LJ’s and their families.
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2 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
5 comments »
Not much to say. I’ve got some video editing stuff to figure out (upside down footage – camera is currently dangling upside down underneath the rig – and how to play some sappy sailing music in the background), but otherwise it was a success. I’m going to coat all the parts with three coats of Arm-R-Seal to try to keep the saltwater out. Wait until you see the footage from the kitecam!
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3 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
5 comments »
Here’s the two reels after I strategically removed about half the wood. It’s still strong, but a whole lot lighter to stuff into the luggage. We’ve addressed the canting keel problem of the camera, and we got our camera/enclosure in the mail today, so I think we’re set. I figured out how to invert .avi video, so we’re going to hang the camera upside down from the middle of the parallel linkage. Tomorrow, we’re going to jump on a boat for an hour and...
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3 days ago
by CaptainSkully |
9 comments »
So today after sailing lessons, we used the boat to “test drive” our contraption. The kite flew very well on just 4 knots under motor, but we had to tweak the lines a bit to get it to fly horizontally. We discussed that the kite can only be flown while we’re going upwind, but that still gives us lots of leeway. The reel performed very well, especially the two speed handles. As you can see, I’m in the process of lightening the reel by drilling holes. We’r...
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18 entries
