Aloha,
I am wondering what are the techniques all of you use to keep your tripods in excellent working condition? I may have additional challenges due to high humidity where I am. It always around 85-95% most of the time. Perhaps those who live in the high humidity area can chime in with your thoughts.
My Tri-Max fiberglass tripod slowly got stickier and stickier when I try to extend it after unlocking the quick lock. I don’t use my setup everyday as I am a “weekend surveyor” 🙂 I didn’t even realize it was no longer extending smoothly until recently. Recently I purchased a second tripod. Same brand and model. I put the new one to use the legs extend out with no effort! I can pick up the aluminum tripod head and the unlocked legs slide down smoothly. Only then it dawn to me—the older one I am using is not how it suppose to work.
High humidity is one suspect. Is there anything else I should know and do to fix this? Btw, the newer one is also begins to get stickier but not as bad as the older one.
Thank you so much!
Aloha,
P.S.: A quick search gave me this one discussion with two posts
https://surveyorconnect.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=223966
Humidity will swell a wood tripod and make it stick but I'm not sure what is going on with your Tri-max's. Those are fiberglass and should be completely immune to humidity. I might try a good cleaning of the tripod legs followed by a coat of paste wax.
If they were wood I'd recommend that you bring them into the air-conditioned indoors for a few days to dry out. That almost always fixes the swelling.
> Humidity will swell a wood tripod and make it stick but I'm not sure what is going on with your Tri-max's. Those are fiberglass and should be completely immune to humidity. I might try a good cleaning of the tripod legs followed by a coat of paste wax.
>
> If they were wood I'd recommend that you bring them into the air-conditioned indoors for a few days to dry out. That almost always fixes the swelling.
I used to use hard wax, lake a candle or a bar of paraffin.
just rub it on the legs where it contacts
Aloha, Mark and Peter:
Thank you for your input. Will experiment see how it goes. Aloha
Non-silicon dry spray lubricate is mostly wax. It goes on easy, wipe off any excess. It doesn't attract dirt or dust, last about two years.
"DuPont Teflon 'Mutli-Lube' Dry Wax Lubricant" to be exact.
Aloha,
Thank you so much!