DIY Boom Pole by a DIY Noob

I know there are plenty of these guides out there. This one is based on the Frugal Filmmaker's awesome instructional video, which is a great guide if you live in America, a country brought up on Home Improvement and McGuyver, with a cavernous Home Depot on every street corner and a Dremel in every tool shed. Here in the UK, you're lucky if you even have a tool shed, and all the decent hardware stores have been swallowed by the bulging, consumerist ubiquity of Ikea. So here is how I made a super-cheap Boom Pole with the bare minimum of tools, talent and cash.

Here's what I used:

Parts

• A 2m telescopic painter's pole. I gave it a shake to make sure there was no rattling or loose connections. Cost - £5
• An M10 (10mm) x 50mm bolt... making sure it fits in the shock mount tightly. Cost - 75p
• An M10 (10mm) nut. Cost - 25p
• Super glue (optional). Cost - £3

Tools

• A drill, with a drill bit that is less than 10mm. My drill is a vintage hand-me-down from my grandfather made in 1985.
• A hacksaw

First thing's first, I made sure the bolt screws tightly into the boom connector on my shock mount. Because my shock mount uses a 3/8" connector and bolts in the UK are sold in millimetres, I had trouble finding a bolt that fitted exactly. I went to a small hardware store and went through a box of loose bolts until I found one the right size. Don't ask me how or why some bolts fit and some don't when they are supposedly all the same size!

Next, at the top of my pole there was a plastic thread for attaching a paint roller. Some DIY Boom Pole guides say this needs to be solid plastic or metal, but I had trouble finding a pole with a solid plastic thread. The one I used was hollow, but it worked okay for this purpose. I drilled a hole that was slightly too small for my bolt; it was to serve as a guide hole, which would get bigger when I worked the bolt in. I had a bit of trouble squeezing the bolt in, so I used a nail file to make the hole slightly bigger (please don't tell my girlfriend).

After that, I had to saw the head off the bolt with a hacksaw. I'd recommend using a workbench with a clamp to hold the bolt steady. I didn't have either so I screwed the bolt into the pole and sat on the end of the pole while sawing the bolt head off. Disclaimer: I seriously don't recommend this method!

Right, hard part's done. All that was left to do was to screw in the bolt so that it fitted tightly. I had some super glue on standby to fix the bolt to the plastic, but I didn't end up using it because the fit was pretty tight. I then screwed the nut onto the bolt. This will prevent the bolt from slipping into the hole. Finally, I screwed on my shock mount and now I'm good to go. I'm going to use the Rode SM3.

I'll let you know how I get on in future production blogs. In the meantime, if you have any of your own tips for building boom poles or any other pieces of kit, let us know in the comments section below.