I don’t recall exactly which group of equipment this Gibraltar Quick-Set pan tilt head arrived with, but I couldn’t bear to just throw it away, despite the fact that it arrived with seemingly no way to mount it to a tripod, and no pan handle. I decided it would be ideal if I could make it mount to a standard Mitchell top tripod, and it definitely needed a new pan handle. In my parts stash was the base of a Worrall geared head that had been dropped and fractured on one edge, but the locating ring and castle nut assembly were still intact. Once I machined away enough of the broken portion so it was round again, I had to machine an aluminum ring to make the final diameter of the base the correct size for a Mitchell tripod mount. At the bottom of the Gibraltar head was a cast aluminum protrusion that wouldn’t fit through the opening in the Worrall base, so the two pieces had to be machined so they would fit together.
Once the Gibraltar head was successfully joined with Worrall base, I machine a slot for a key and moved on to the issue of the pan handle. Cast into the side of the Gibraltar head is a pattern for a rosette that clearly once held the pan handle. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the mating part of the rosette. Using a chamfering bit that had the same angle as the cast rosette, I machined a piece of aluminum bar to match the existing pattern. That done, I found a nice sturdy piece of steel tubing, bored a hole in the new rosette, polished the steel tube, and attached the new handle. Victory! Not the most elegant pan tilt head, but once again a useful piece of equipment, and more importantly not sitting in a landfill. There is still a little more work to do before this pan tilt head is ready for sale, but it is nearly done.
