Just finished the first half of "The Grizzly" (Great America reference), an attempt to make a pile of scrap wood in my driveway useful. Looks more like a gallows for executing small animals. I realize aluminum is the way to go, but the point was to utilize the pile of wood that was heading to the trash and 20 bucks in bolts/screws/tears. If it fails, it fails. I've only lost a weekend...

The stem is detachable, so I can somewhat pack it up and take it somewhere. Although I didn't plan on traveling with it. Now I need to figure out the hard part, the boom arm and how to attach a camera to this thing. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to go aluminum piping there (besides I have run out of usable wood) and some sort of camera mount.

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Grizzly update. Short version: don't use wood.

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The material is sturdy for a base and stem, but once I had to figure out how to attach the boom arm for the camera it became really, really obvious that wood is the only way to go if you're being cheap AND you have nothing else available.

The next one I am definitely raising the budget and going aluminum piping for the entire thing. It's not that The Grizzly failed, but it's very much NOT portable friendly. It also doesn't help that I am not a carpenter. There is definitely some crookedness going on with some of the stuff. BUT, it should still work.

The final step is putting a camera on the boom arm and testing it out. This part I am using aluminum tubing and a cheap bike-camera rig I found at Fry's (it's a belt system that you tighten around a bar, then swivel/spin the camera into place...it's more sturdy than I expected, BUT, I wouldn't stick a DSLR on it, but for a cheap-o cam on a cheap-o pinball rig, it seems to work).

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