My photo tripod is a cheap China-made Bluesky-branded thing I bought for $20 some 30 years ago in a supermarket. As photo gear goes, you can’t find anything cheaper and more unsophisticated. I’ve often thought I should buy a better one, but I’ve never bothered because this one is okay. Not great, but good enough that I balk each time I look at the prices of better tripods. I use it 10 times a year tops, and it’s plenty good enough for that.

But over time, the rubber pad dried up and disintegrated, and the screw’s retaining ring got lost. Somehow I managed to never lose the screw in our many moves since I bought that thing, but it was getting seriously unusable.

I figured the tripod is a survivor and deserved a new lease on life. So I cleaned up the remnants of the old rubber pad and the glue underneath, flattened a spring lock washer to use as a new retaining ring, cut and shaped a piece of an old antistatic mat I had lying around and glued it back on in lieu of the old pad. And now my trusty tripod is all fixed up and ready for another 30 years 🙂