[LargeFormat] re tripods

[philip.lambert]

My wooden tripod bears the label "Johnsons of Hendon"  (a well-known
distributor) with no indication of manufacturer. It is nothing like as
massive as the illustrations you directed me to and the only clamps are at
the bottom of each wooden leg-pair to grip the metal lower leg.  I feel sure
it would support a wooden 5x4 but nothing massive. My former 10x8 Sinar
metal monorail and un-named wooden 10x8 would have been much more than the
tripod would bear.  I see it as aimed at serious amateurs with mahogany
Sanderson bellows cameras.   Prewar/postwar era is my unsupported guess.
Tripods I saw in the 1950s were all tubular alloy not wood.  I don't think
it's a surveyor's tripod but only because the standard 1/4 inch Whitworth
thread carried a pan /tilt head with a protruding pin  fitting a matching
hole in the tripod top. Would a surveyor use a pan/tilt?
Cine-camera tripod?  The lack of a central column surprises me.Philip