A few years ago I bought a wonderful wood Ries tripod. These are made by a small company in Washington State and sold world wide. These are heavy stable tripods generally preferred by large format photographers, for big view cameras. They are beautifully made from maple hardwood, and nicely finished. Although in many ways they have the qualities of a nice piece of furniture, to me it is a tool to be used to create photographs. I don't go out of my way to abuse mine, but I am afraid it has suffered some rough treatment in recent months. It endured some blowing sand in Utah during my two recent trips. The badlands of southern Alberta provided similar conditions and when it got knocked over in the wind there, that didn't help. It has seen plenty of wear and tear bouncing around in the back of my truck, not to mention numerous times beating through the bush with it. The legs of the tripod were getting gummed up with grit and dirt and extension was becoming restricted. This most recent trip out to the Pacific Coast in Oregon contributed yet more sand, and added some salt spray to the mix. Earlier this week I stripped the tripod apart and cleaned out all the dust and grit as best as I could. I then used some wood finishing wax and resurfaced all the wooden components of the tripod. This not only touched up all the wear and weathering that was beginning to show, but now the extension and adjustment of the legs is smooth and clean... just like new.
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