RED Shoulder Dovetail Tune-up - getting it to fit right

[Emmanuel Cambier]

I guess you are right Michael, I wish I had your skill.

Emmanuel

[jason.lee.wong]

Thanks so much for the post - I used some gaff tape to shim the body to the base plate then used the wood&mallet technique to get my base plate back to shape. Rock solid***

While I was at it, I was taking apart the shoulder mount, and several questions came to mind -

1) why are there springs underneath the plate behind the silicone foot? the hex screws keep the plate down - so I don't understand why there are springs pushing up the plate.


2) why is there a small removable piece behind those springs? I removed it - and it doesn't seem to fit any purpose.


3) and finally, what is the purpose of the smaller removable plate? I took it off and it allows access to the inside of the rubber shoulder pad - but i don't see much purpose in that.

[Gary Stone]

was the .03" of paper put on both sides of the camera? or just one side? sorry if this is a stupid question...

[Bang WOW Bang]

Thanks so much for the post - I used some gaff tape to shim the body to the base plate then used the wood&mallet technique to get my base plate back to shape. Rock solid***

While I was at it, I was taking apart the shoulder mount, and several questions came to mind -

1) why are there springs underneath the plate behind the silicone foot? the hex screws keep the plate down - so I don't understand why there are springs pushing up the plate.


2) why is there a small removable piece behind those springs? I removed it - and it doesn't seem to fit any purpose.


3) and finally, what is the purpose of the smaller removable plate? I took it off and it allows access to the inside of the rubber shoulder pad - but i don't see much purpose in that.

All RED accessories should be manufactured in CHINA - WORLD Factory to save all our RED buyers ' pocket ...and Time.

Stewart Chong
HKG - CHINA

[Michael Morlan]

Gary, in my case, I had a total of .03" so I put that much shim on one side. I suppose I could have distributed the shim between sides. The beauty of the paper solution is you can just keep building it up by trial-and-error.

Jason, not sure about the springs and bar. I suspect the smaller removable plate is merely to reveal the inside of that cavity when installing the rubber shoulder pad. It also serves as a clamp for the rubber tabs. That pad does come out and is difficult to reinsert from the outside alone. Being able to pull on the rubber tabs from within the cavity makes installation a lot simpler.

Michael

[Damon Meledones]

Jason, the smaller removable plate provides for a safe and convenient place to stash your emergency lunch money.

[sander kamp]

While I was at it, I was taking apart the shoulder mount, and several questions came to mind - [/IMG]

1) I think the springs push the pin back in when you release the handle. Otherwise the pin would stay up and is impossible to get to unless you take off the bottom plate from the camera.

2) Not sure.

3) To keep the rubber in place.

[David Wyatt]

I just cut a piece of someone's business card to the same shape as the rubber in-step (including the little hole in the in-step that the metal bolt goes through). I put this piece of card underneath the rubber in-step and hey-presto - rock solid(ish), certainly no unacceptable wobble like before. I tried two pieces of card cut to the same shape but that seemed to be too thick to lock the mechanism in place, so one seemed to do fine.

Seeing the bend developed in the bottom plate by locking it tightly to the camera leads me to suspect part of the whole wobble problem is that the bottom plate metal is nowhere near rugged enough for its application (in fact it's pretty brittle metal, especially at the thinner sections). Compared to something like an Arri sliding base-plate (which is bomb proof), the Red bottom plate is a bit flimsy IMHO.

[Brent@RED]

Brent, are these new dovetails shipping yet? I'm still waiting for mine.

Around NAB we started shipping DOVETAILS with this pad change. We are fulfilling backorders in order of reservation number as we speak...

BC

[Steven-Marc C.]

Yeah, thanks Brent, just got my tracking number about an hour ago! :)