**A DIY Project: Creating a Custom Remote Control with Wooden Handles**

Forstner bit to countersink around that hole this lets the hex head of the bolt fit right in and not stick at the bottom. The quarter-twenty bolted I had was a little bit too long, so I marked where the nut needed to sit to hold us securely and the extra space that was needed for the Joey head to mount. I rolled the nut up to a little bit past the final length of my bolt and then used a grinder to flatten it to that point by taking off the nut at that point it keeps the threads intact and that left just enough to screw into the Joby head.

Next, I had to drill a couple of holes on the ends of the aluminum extrusion to mount the handles. I did this with a quarter inch drill bit so that I could use quarter-twenty bolts here as well. Then, I drilled out the bottom of my handles with a little bit smaller bit and used a wood tap to add some threads inside the handles. This makes it so that the quarter-twenty bolts go right in and hold securely. You could just drive in a screw to the bottom of these pieces of wood and it would hold it in place, but by making threads you end up with a stronger connection that'll actually last longer.

In its most basic form, it was pretty much done there were still a lot of details left to make it a little bit more usable. The first one was to add the remote to one of the handles and to do that I had to clamp it up and mark a line that would be the center of where the remote go. The inside of this remote is really simple, it's basically just a few terminals that get pressed together and you could make your own with some buttons. You also might want to check out a video by Becky Stern that she did recently where she made a foot pedal that serves the same purpose, it's really cool.

I pulled this remote apart and used the top piece to lay on top of the handle so that I could trace its outside shape. Then, I found two Forstner bits that fit the contours on both ends of the remote, one was a little bit bigger than the other so I swapped them out. He got two circles on each end and then hogged got the space in between after that I spent a good amount of time with the chisel trying to carve out the rest of the shape to hit the outline that I had left earlier. Eventually, I moved to a dremel with a sanding drum to smooth out the surface of the inset and get the contours right on the ends.

Eventually, I got a really nice press fit on this whole thing. I made a small mark at the top where the wire needed to come out and used a ball nose bit to make a little channel for it to fit through once I was happy with the fit of the remote and the slot for the wire, I took it into the office and cut the wire off. Really just needed to shorten the wire so I cut off the excess and resoldered the end back onto the terminals.

After that, I had to plug everything up to make sure that it still worked as it should. This button gives you a half press for focus and a full press to start and stop the recording but the handles were a little bit longer than they needed to be so I took them off and cut them down. We put them back on the lathe and Josh added a little detail to the top just to make them easier to hold and a little bit nicer looking.

I covered these with two coats of spray polyurethane to help them look nicer but also hold up better over time, a light sanding in between those coats made for a really nice finish. Then it was time to put everything back together this thing turned out really cool and it actually didn't take us very long to do at all.

One of the cool things is that this is all material that you could find at a local home center, these extrusions are from a local store, this wood is just something I had laying around but you could use any wood here it doesn't really matter. The cool thing about this aluminum is that you could put anything that you wanted to on the bottom of it so you can extend the functionality here, you could hang counter weights to make it even more stable you could attach lights or wheels to make it a roller there are a whole lot of possibilities with this thing.

If you want to make something like this I'm gonna put a link to the mount that I use and this remote and all the other stuff we use down in the description, you can go check it out. I hope you like this one let me know what you think about it down in the comments. I've got lots of other types of videos for you to check out and don't forget to subscribe.

**Materials Used**

* Aluminum extrusion

* Wood (for handles)

* Quarter-twenty bolts

* Forstner bits

* Chisel

* Dremel with sanding drum

* Wire

* Spray polyurethane

**Tools Used**

* Drill press

* Drill bits

* Hammer

* Tape measure

* Clamps

* Sandpaper

* Dremel

* Chisel set

* Ball nose bit

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm gonna make a two-handed camera grip you probably know that josh has been working with me for a while now and he's shooting all of the videos these days and we do handheld work when you hold the camera this close sometimes it has a tendency to wobble so if we widen out that grip it should translate to a little more fluid movement let's do it I started out with a piece of aluminum channel that I already had from The Home Center I laid out my camera on it to figure out how long it needed to be to account for the camera and both of my hands aluminum can be cut on most woodworking tools so I just chopped it down to length I found a block of wood that I had to use for the handles and it turned out to be mahogany but really you could use anything here I chopped it down into two pieces to make the handles out of and then I squared them up using the table saw I put these in the lathe and started turning them down into cylinders I wasn't really sure how big to make these I just needed to make them comfortable to hold after some trial and error I picked decides that I thought would be comfortable and set the calipers to that size they used that to measure the piece as I turn them down after I got a rough shape I went over it with some sandpaper to make it more comfortable to hold this also evens out the shape to make it a little bit more uniform and after I was happy with the first one I made a second one pretty much exactly the same way this video is sponsored by simply safe which is awesome because I've been using them for home security in my house for over two years they've got a whole new set of hardware which is really well engineered all the components on the system are really slick and a lot of them are smaller than they used to be and it's super easy to set up once you've got it set up for only $14.99 a month you get 24/7 professional monitoring and police dispatch so if there are any problems they will call you right away to check in but there's also no contract so if you decide at any point you don't want that monitoring you can cancel no problem the system works on Wi-Fi and cellular and has a battery backup so if you lose power or somebody cuts your phone lines the monitoring service can still get in touch with you to check in the system is really great and like I said it's really easy to set up if you need home security in your house you should definitely check into them there'll be a link to find out all the information you need down below be sure to go check them out thanks simply safe after getting the handles off the lathe I use a miter saw to square up the ends and I cut off a small piece to use later on after setting the handles in place I realized it was too wide so I cut it down a little bit more then I marked a spot to drill a hole for each one of the handles and the center point of the whole piece where the camera would be mounted you can buy pretty inexpensive camera grips but we have a couple of design constraints the first one is these Joby heads we use these on all the cameras on all the tripods so you can take every camera and snap it right into another device so we're going to mount that attachment onto a normal quarter twenty bolt we're also going to use this really inexpensive remote and just modify it slightly you could actually make your own but this one was about ten bucks we're gonna use it you could mount the camera directly on top of the piece of aluminum but the center of gravity is a little bit further back so to help it balance I decided to cut out a plate and put it on top of this new channel I drew out kind of a simple gusset on a thick piece of aluminum and cut it out on the bandsaw and this piece will actually serve two purposes it makes it easier to balance while you're holding it but also acts as a foot so you can set the grip down on that table like I often do on the bandsaw I didn't cut at the line instead I cut next to it and then use the sander to creep up on it I decided to drill holes in this through both pieces at the same time so I was sure that they would line up I used some CA glue to hold the pieces together and then used a punch to start the hole and guide the drill bit I drilled a hole through both of these at the same time I made sure that the hole was big enough for the pop rivets that I wanted to use but it didn't put him in quite yet first I marked and drilled a hole for the quarter-twenty bolt to go through the back of the plate it was just easier to clamp this piece flat if it wasn't attached to anything else but what's that fit and everything was good I put in the pop rivets with a ruby gun remember that little circle of wood I cut off earlier that's gonna act as a foot underneath the bottom of this plate I held it in place and marked where I needed to flatten one side so it could fit right up against the U Channel I drilled one hole all the way through that would fit the quarter-twenty bolt then used a Forstner bit to countersink around that hole this lets the hex head of the bolt fit right in and not stick at the bottom the quarter-twenty bolted I had was a little bit too long so I marked where the nut needed to sit to hold us securely and the extra space that was needed for the Joey head to mount I rolled the nut up to a little bit past the final length of my bolt and then used a grinder to flatten it to that point by taking off the nut at that point it keeps the threads intact and that left just enough to screw into the Joby head next I had to drill a couple of holes on the ends of the aluminum extrusion to mount the handles I did this with a quarter inch drill bit so that I could use quarter-twenty bolts here as well then I drill out the bottom of my handles with a little bit smaller bit and used a wood tap to add some threads inside the handles this makes it so that the quarter-twenty bolts go right in and hold securely you could just drive in a screw to the bottom of these pieces of wood and it would hold it in place but by making threads you end up with a stronger connection that'll actually last longer after that in its most basic form it was pretty much done there were still a lot of details left to make it a little bit more usable the first one was to add the remote to one of the handles and to do that I had to clamp it up and Mark a line that would be the center of where the remote go the inside of this remote is really simple it's basically just a few terminals that get pressed together and you could make your own with some buttons you also might want to check out a video by Becky Stern that she did really recently where she made a foot pedal that serves the same purpose it's really cool I'll have a link down below I pulled this remote apart and used the top piece to lay on top of the handle so that I could trace its outside shape then I found two Forstner bits that fit the contours on both ends of the remote one was a little bit bigger than the other so I swapped them out he got two circles on each end and then hogg got the space in between after that I spent a good amount of time with the chisel trying to carve out the rest of the shape to hit the outline that I had left earlier it eventually I moved to a dremel with a sanding drum to smooth out the surface of the inset and get the contours right on the ends eventually I got a really nice press fit on this whole thing I made a small mark at the top where the wire needed to come out and used a ball nose bit to make a little channel for it to fit through once I was happy with the fit of the remote and the slot for the wire I took it into the office and cut the wire off I really just needed to shorten the wire so I cut off the excess and resolder the end back onto the terminals and after that I had to plug everything up to make sure that it still worked as it should this button gives you a half press for focus and a full press to start and stop the recording but the handles were a little bit longer than they needed to be so I took them off and cut them down we put them back on the lathe and Josh added a little detail to the top just to make them easier to hold and a little bit nicer looking I covered these with two coats of spray polyurethane to help them look nicer but also hold up better over time a light sanding in between those coats made for a really nice finish then it was time to put everything back together this thing turned out really cool and it actually didn't take us very long to do at all one of the cool things is that this is all material that you could find at a local home center these extrusions are from a local store this wood is just something I had laying around but you could use any wood here it doesn't really matter the cool thing about this aluminum is that you could put anything that you wanted to on the bottom of it so you can extend the functionality here you could hang counter weights to make it even more stable you could attach lights or wheels to make it a roller there are a whole lot of possibilities with this thing if you want to make something like this I'm gonna put a link to the mount that I use and this remote and all the other stuff we use down in the description you can go check it out I hope you like this one let me know what you think about it down in the comments I've got lots of other types of videos for you to check out and don't forget to subscribe that's it for this one guys thanks for watching see you next time we're also going to use this writtenhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm gonna make a two-handed camera grip you probably know that josh has been working with me for a while now and he's shooting all of the videos these days and we do handheld work when you hold the camera this close sometimes it has a tendency to wobble so if we widen out that grip it should translate to a little more fluid movement let's do it I started out with a piece of aluminum channel that I already had from The Home Center I laid out my camera on it to figure out how long it needed to be to account for the camera and both of my hands aluminum can be cut on most woodworking tools so I just chopped it down to length I found a block of wood that I had to use for the handles and it turned out to be mahogany but really you could use anything here I chopped it down into two pieces to make the handles out of and then I squared them up using the table saw I put these in the lathe and started turning them down into cylinders I wasn't really sure how big to make these I just needed to make them comfortable to hold after some trial and error I picked decides that I thought would be comfortable and set the calipers to that size they used that to measure the piece as I turn them down after I got a rough shape I went over it with some sandpaper to make it more comfortable to hold this also evens out the shape to make it a little bit more uniform and after I was happy with the first one I made a second one pretty much exactly the same way this video is sponsored by simply safe which is awesome because I've been using them for home security in my house for over two years they've got a whole new set of hardware which is really well engineered all the components on the system are really slick and a lot of them are smaller than they used to be and it's super easy to set up once you've got it set up for only $14.99 a month you get 24/7 professional monitoring and police dispatch so if there are any problems they will call you right away to check in but there's also no contract so if you decide at any point you don't want that monitoring you can cancel no problem the system works on Wi-Fi and cellular and has a battery backup so if you lose power or somebody cuts your phone lines the monitoring service can still get in touch with you to check in the system is really great and like I said it's really easy to set up if you need home security in your house you should definitely check into them there'll be a link to find out all the information you need down below be sure to go check them out thanks simply safe after getting the handles off the lathe I use a miter saw to square up the ends and I cut off a small piece to use later on after setting the handles in place I realized it was too wide so I cut it down a little bit more then I marked a spot to drill a hole for each one of the handles and the center point of the whole piece where the camera would be mounted you can buy pretty inexpensive camera grips but we have a couple of design constraints the first one is these Joby heads we use these on all the cameras on all the tripods so you can take every camera and snap it right into another device so we're going to mount that attachment onto a normal quarter twenty bolt we're also going to use this really inexpensive remote and just modify it slightly you could actually make your own but this one was about ten bucks we're gonna use it you could mount the camera directly on top of the piece of aluminum but the center of gravity is a little bit further back so to help it balance I decided to cut out a plate and put it on top of this new channel I drew out kind of a simple gusset on a thick piece of aluminum and cut it out on the bandsaw and this piece will actually serve two purposes it makes it easier to balance while you're holding it but also acts as a foot so you can set the grip down on that table like I often do on the bandsaw I didn't cut at the line instead I cut next to it and then use the sander to creep up on it I decided to drill holes in this through both pieces at the same time so I was sure that they would line up I used some CA glue to hold the pieces together and then used a punch to start the hole and guide the drill bit I drilled a hole through both of these at the same time I made sure that the hole was big enough for the pop rivets that I wanted to use but it didn't put him in quite yet first I marked and drilled a hole for the quarter-twenty bolt to go through the back of the plate it was just easier to clamp this piece flat if it wasn't attached to anything else but what's that fit and everything was good I put in the pop rivets with a ruby gun remember that little circle of wood I cut off earlier that's gonna act as a foot underneath the bottom of this plate I held it in place and marked where I needed to flatten one side so it could fit right up against the U Channel I drilled one hole all the way through that would fit the quarter-twenty bolt then used a Forstner bit to countersink around that hole this lets the hex head of the bolt fit right in and not stick at the bottom the quarter-twenty bolted I had was a little bit too long so I marked where the nut needed to sit to hold us securely and the extra space that was needed for the Joey head to mount I rolled the nut up to a little bit past the final length of my bolt and then used a grinder to flatten it to that point by taking off the nut at that point it keeps the threads intact and that left just enough to screw into the Joby head next I had to drill a couple of holes on the ends of the aluminum extrusion to mount the handles I did this with a quarter inch drill bit so that I could use quarter-twenty bolts here as well then I drill out the bottom of my handles with a little bit smaller bit and used a wood tap to add some threads inside the handles this makes it so that the quarter-twenty bolts go right in and hold securely you could just drive in a screw to the bottom of these pieces of wood and it would hold it in place but by making threads you end up with a stronger connection that'll actually last longer after that in its most basic form it was pretty much done there were still a lot of details left to make it a little bit more usable the first one was to add the remote to one of the handles and to do that I had to clamp it up and Mark a line that would be the center of where the remote go the inside of this remote is really simple it's basically just a few terminals that get pressed together and you could make your own with some buttons you also might want to check out a video by Becky Stern that she did really recently where she made a foot pedal that serves the same purpose it's really cool I'll have a link down below I pulled this remote apart and used the top piece to lay on top of the handle so that I could trace its outside shape then I found two Forstner bits that fit the contours on both ends of the remote one was a little bit bigger than the other so I swapped them out he got two circles on each end and then hogg got the space in between after that I spent a good amount of time with the chisel trying to carve out the rest of the shape to hit the outline that I had left earlier it eventually I moved to a dremel with a sanding drum to smooth out the surface of the inset and get the contours right on the ends eventually I got a really nice press fit on this whole thing I made a small mark at the top where the wire needed to come out and used a ball nose bit to make a little channel for it to fit through once I was happy with the fit of the remote and the slot for the wire I took it into the office and cut the wire off I really just needed to shorten the wire so I cut off the excess and resolder the end back onto the terminals and after that I had to plug everything up to make sure that it still worked as it should this button gives you a half press for focus and a full press to start and stop the recording but the handles were a little bit longer than they needed to be so I took them off and cut them down we put them back on the lathe and Josh added a little detail to the top just to make them easier to hold and a little bit nicer looking I covered these with two coats of spray polyurethane to help them look nicer but also hold up better over time a light sanding in between those coats made for a really nice finish then it was time to put everything back together this thing turned out really cool and it actually didn't take us very long to do at all one of the cool things is that this is all material that you could find at a local home center these extrusions are from a local store this wood is just something I had laying around but you could use any wood here it doesn't really matter the cool thing about this aluminum is that you could put anything that you wanted to on the bottom of it so you can extend the functionality here you could hang counter weights to make it even more stable you could attach lights or wheels to make it a roller there are a whole lot of possibilities with this thing if you want to make something like this I'm gonna put a link to the mount that I use and this remote and all the other stuff we use down in the description you can go check it out I hope you like this one let me know what you think about it down in the comments I've got lots of other types of videos for you to check out and don't forget to subscribe that's it for this one guys thanks for watching see you next time we're also going to use this written\n"