Wouldn't it be a good idea to make a sticky thread here with sites for homebuilt dollys, steadicams, cranes...?
Like they have a bit in the Independent Production board.

Good idea. If you'd like to start such a thread then I or one of the other moderators would be happy to "stick" it for you :-)

Well, in that case, this can be it. I was thinking about only giving sites where they give you information about building it yourself, and not where you only can buy a book where the information is, because otherwise, it's maybe more approperiate for the Reading About it - board.

These are the sites I got via this board, that may help some:

http://www.homebuiltstabilizers.com/

http://www.webbpickersgill.com/stabilizer/

http://steadycamplans.blogspot.com/

http://www.hbsboard.com/

http://homepage.mac.com/visiondigital/PhotoAlbum7.html

http://www.birthofthecool.com/dolly.html

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/

http://www.shadowgirlproject.com/dolly01.asp (french but with exellent photos, enough to understand without reading)

Hope this helps, and I hope other can contribute to this sticky too,

If you want to translate that french site so you can read it as well as look at the great pictures...

Go here: http://babelfish.altavista.com/

in the "translate a web page" box, paste full URL of the page you want translated. Click the button and bam! it's in english (or your preferred language).

I used babelfish on the french site mentioned above, and it worked great!

Wonder if this post should be un-stuck. Only 3 of the links still work (and 2 of those point to different parts of homebuiltstabilizers.com)

just a thought.
-a

Agreed -- thanks Andrew,

I just purchased a "professionally" built dolly that uses the typical homemade forms... what I got was a 16-wheel on 360-degree swivel, 24.5-inch industry standard width, 28x36 platform, able to hold 600 pounds.... cost $300 plus shipping.

Check out www.glideshot.com. Seems to be pretty good stuff. I'll be using this weekend.

I just purchased a "professionally" built dolly that uses the typical homemade forms... what I got was a 16-wheel on 360-degree swivel, 24.5-inch industry standard width, 28x36 platform, able to hold 600 pounds.... cost $300 plus shipping.

Check out www.glideshot.com. Seems to be pretty good stuff. I'll be using this weekend.

I got this thing set up last night on 10-foot PVC and it runs like a charm. Smooth, with me on it (250 lbs.) had no problems... excited about using it this weekend on my shoot. I'll post some vid if all goes well.