DIY Display Turntable for Video

– August 7, 2011

Fun DIY project.

I am a big fan of the way Jarrod from Just Basl Productions does his product reviews on Vimeo. He uses a turntable along with a slider which gives his product videos a ton of interest. Since I have been doing more product reviews lately, I thought I would try out his technique to see if it fits my style. I contacted him and he was nice enough to give me some pointers.

But first I needed to find a turntable that could handle some weight, then I remembered an old Perry Jenkin’s video from DJTV. So I took Perry’s advice and went to the hardware store to pick up 16″ circular wood disc at Lowe’s [3/4 x 16 AC/BC Fir Round Item #: 181834 |  Model #:1213024], a 6″ lazy Susan bearings at Home Depot to provide a bed for the rotation and then I found a really old rotisserie motor [Char-Broil EMS81 - discontinued] for $10 on Craigslist, this thing is really old I am guessing 20 years and it looked like it cooked a lot of birds. This motor is perfect because it rotates slowly and has a ton of torque.

I took the motor out of the casing because it need to be lubricated and I didn’t need it anyway. I thought I would need a variable speed motor, but I didn’t because the speed is perfect which is about 6 cycles per minute, if I wanted to slow down the footage slightly I could over crank at 30fps and conform down to 24fps.

I mounted the motor to a wood box I built, and then mounted the bearings to the box, if you want detail instructions, Perry has done an excellent job and I will not repeat it.

I then cut the skewer and glued it in to the wood like Perry did, and let it dry for 24 hours.

I spackled the wood and then painted it with flat black paint.

After using for about a day the metal skewer rod came loose from the wood disc, so back to the hardware store and I picked up some L brackets to make sure that would not happen again.

After I built it I had to test it out, my girls came to see what I was doing and we had fun trying some of their toys.

The girls were cracking me up.

It is kind of a cool way to help tell a story like I drank too much Grand Marnier last night and had to take some Pepto in the morning, or I the boxes require glue.

Within no time I had a very cool turntable that only cost me $20 that can handle up to 15 pounds of weight.

After using it for awhile I got tired off plugging it in to turn it on so I use the switch box from an old halogen light was not using anymore and made a footswitch from it that works great.

Perhaps in another video I will show you some tricks with the slider and turntable and how to light it. Just quickly I will tell you I am lighting it with one $25 halogen work light from the hardware store and a bounce board.

Set Up

Products Use in this Video

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Thanks to Kevin Macleod and GregVMusic for the creative commons music.