Home Depot Week: T-Nuts

So, you bought a cheap old flash on eBay with a busted hot shoe for $5.00. If you've got 69 more cents you can mount it to a light stand.

That thingie mounted onto the back of the (perfectly good) Vivitar 285 at left is called a "T-nut." They are pretty easy to find in 1/4x20 or 3/8" sizes. It is fastened with "JB Weld" glue.

Long story short, anything you can stick a T-nut to can be mounted on a light stand. In fact, you could purposely destroy the hot shoe of a flash without a PC jack to get access to the synch wires and easily fashion your own pigtail 1/8" synch cord, using the T-nut to mount the flash. But that's another post.

You can also get spiked t-nuts that would mount to the underside of a small piece of wood (which would increase the surface area for the gluing) if you are concerned about strength of the bond.

Added bennie: The t-nut mount gets the flash head very close to the axis of the umbrella shaft, if you are softening your light that way.

(Thanks or the heads-up, Chad!)

-30-