Those who like to play tag and film the action will know what this is for right off the bat. Simply put, it mounts a camera to the sight rail of an LTTO tagger, such as a TMB, so that you can play WHILE filming, and also get a taggers-eye view of the action.
Construction is pretty simple. I started with a simple scope ring for Weaver rails. The TMB and other LTTO scope rails are slightly larger than standard Weaver rails, but most accessories for Weaver rails can be made to fit an LTTO rail. The ring I chose has two parts, where the two parts are split exactly across the center of the ring, parallel to the rail. By removing the top half, there is a level surface to work with for the camera mount. I then took some spare aluminum bar and cut two pieces to the length of the span across the scope ring including the screw posts. I measured and marked the centers of where the ring assembly screws went, and drilled those holes into the aluminum bar. The bottom bar has the holes just big enough for the screws to go through, and the top bar has them big enough for the screw heads to be obscured. I did this because I didn't have a way to countersink the screw holes, and the aluminum I had wasn't think enough anyway. So two layers it had to be. I also drilled holes in the center of both bars for the bolt that will go into the camera's tripod mount. Finally, I put some no slip grip tape on the top so that the camera wouldn't rotate easily once mounted.
Assembly is easy. Just remember to put the bolt for the camera through the bottom bar before you mount it to the bottom half of the scope ring. ;-) I could probably glue the two aluminum parts together somehow, but they're loose for now. Here's a crappy pic of the mount in use on my old camera.
My old camera didn't have a wide enough viewing angle to get the barrel of the TMB in the shot, which adds to the flavor of the video, imho. It also only shot 15fps video. I recently picked up a new digicam that takes 30fps video, and fortunately has a wide enough lens angle to get the TMB in the shot. The anti-shake feature also adds an interesting effect to the video, making it appear that the camera is not mounted directly to the tagger. Check out this video I shot at our Fort Worden game in 2006.