Now that I am fully back in work mode, I thought I would share with you a little more of what work had to be done to bring this Camera Equipment Company Gyro Head back to working condition. Originally, this gyro head had some sort of threaded center axle that did a couple of jobs: one was holding the lower pan section in place, and the other was to provide some form of tie down to the tripod. The pan portion of the gyro head relies on a plate that has a large ring gear mounted to it. This assembly, as well as the original bowl mount, relied on the broken center axle to keep them in alignment and hold them in place. The center axle had been sheared off at some point in its life, and the bowl mount casting had a small fracture line in the upper section of the casting. This could lead to future mechanical failures, and since I also didn’t have a matching bowl-top tripod to pair with this pan head, I decided to abandon the bowl mount altogether and convert the gyro head to mount on a standard Pro-Jr. Tripod.
To achieve this end goal, a new center axle was designed and machined, a new Pro-Jr. Style baseplate with key was made, a new threaded mounting post and matching castle nut were machined, and the dust cover for the pan axis was modified to fit with the new baseplate. The internal clockwork gearboxes were cleaned and lubricated before I reassembled everything. I only had one half of the pan handle, so I also machined a replacement of the threaded portion of the pan handle. With all of the parts now back together, I mounted the gyro head on a tripod and tried it out. Success! Since previously I had only been familiar with the Gyro head from Akeley, I have also included a couple of pictures of the Camera Equipment Company Gyro head alongside a couple of the Akeley Gyro heads I have in stock.
