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Pioneering around the world

Scouting is a worldwide movement - it is thought that there are only six countries on Earth that have no Scout troops. I've been lucky enough to speak to Scouts all over the world while I've been running this blog. I realised the other day that I've spoken to Scouts on every continent on earth, except Antarctica (yes, there are Scout troops in Antarctica).

Here are a few projects from around the world that have been featured on Ropes and Poles:

In Uruguay, the Juan de Cordoba troop built a trebuchet based on the one on Ropes and Poles. A video can be viewed here.

Various Scouts from Israel have shared there amazing sculptural projects with me: flaming night-time artworks, giant dinosaurs and enormous hedgehogs.

This 13 metre radio tower is from the Netherlands.

Scoutmaster blog in the United States has shared many projects, including these impossible projects and many pioneering resources.

If you're a reader of this blog and your country is missing from the map, leave a comment and I'll add it on.
(and you can make your own visited countries map by visiting this link.)

Discworld Jamboree

I've been a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books for about 15 years. This year, the Discworld fan event being held from the 3rd to the 5th of August in Wincanton is a 'Scout Jamboree', complete with Discworld troops, a Gang Show and a wide range of 'interest badge' events. While not an official Scouting event by any means, it seems a lot of effort has gone into researching the appropriate activities, and I am particularly looking forward to seeing the results of the Semaphore tower competition- patrols will be competing to build towers that can signal in semaphore when operated from the ground. Booking forms and other info are available here. For those, like me, who are unable to attend there will also be a Jamboree over the Clacks at the Cunning Artificer forums.

A brief example of the sort of effort that has gone into researching background: here is the badge for the fictitious Scout Association sponsoring the event. The motto 'In Omnia Paratus' is a rough translation of 'Be Prepared'(or 'Ready for anything') into Latin.

5 Bamboo pioneering projects from Flickr.com

Bamboo is a lightweight, fast growing material for pioneering, that is available relatively cheaply in most tropical regions of the world. Flickr.com has some incredible photos of projects built with bamboo.

First, Duncan Hodges' photo of a bamboo tower in Oxford:


Hoffa534 has a great photo of the bamboo scaffolding that is common in China and much of the Far East:


Michaelbrandon has a photo of a bamboo raft in Thailand:

...and Kandyjaxx has these details of the lashings holding a bamboo raft together

Finally, Ed Fladung has this photo of a bamboo bridge in Vietnam:


There are (literally) thousands of other photographs of bamboo structures on Flickr, and the Bamboo (bambu) photo pool is a good place to start if you want to see some of them. There's also a great book called Build Your Own House which is available on Amazon.com, that has great photographs and drawings of buildings constructed from bamboo.

Clover-leaf lashing

I came across this lashing, which is new to me, on the excellent Dutch Scouting wiki, Scoutpedia.nl. This is a lashing used to tie 4 or more poles together at one point. Here is my rough paraphrase of the original Dutch wiki entry:

The Cloverleaf (or polypod) lashing is used to lash a number of poles together to make a 'multi-pod' - a tripod, quadpod, pentapod or hexapod.

You could use a figure of eight lashing (or a sailmaker's lashing for that matter) to make a tripod but from a quadpod upwards you need the cloverleaf lashing.

1. Lie the four (or five or six) poles with their bases lined up (so your multipod will stand up straight) and make sure that there is space between the poles to be able to pass the rope through for the lashing (you can use short poles to space the poles out, like in this drawing). The poles should be evenly spaced so that they form a square (or pentagon or hexagon- from here on I'll assume we're using 4 poles).

2. Tie the rope to one of the poles with a clove hitch.

3. Wrap the rope once around each pole, in the same direction each time, as shown in this drawing.

4. If your poles were correctly spaced, you'll see a square in the middle of the lashing. By looking at this shape, you can check whether you are tying the knot properly. If it's not a square anymore, you have tightened the lashing incorrectly.


5. Repeat steps 3 and 4, going around all the poles three times (but see this post for a discussion about that).


6. Start frapping, putting a set of frapping turns around each pole in succession. Start frapping at the pole and wrap towards the inside.To start the next frapping, take one turn around the next pole, so that you are able to start the frappings from the pole and work inwards. Repeat for each pole.

7. For the last pole, frap from the inside to the outside, and end by tying a clove hitch around that pole.

(alternatively, read it in Dutch here)

So, an interesting little lashing, that is useful for one specific job (just like the scaffold lashing has one, very specific use). I imagine that it's best not to use a frapping mallet to tighten this lashing, because it will probably stretch out as you spread the legs of the multipod out. As far as I can tell, this lashing originates in Belgium - at least all of the web sites that reference it are in Belgium. The drawings here are courtesy of the 44th Sint-Maarten Scout Group.

So, can anyone share a photograph of this lashing in action? Are there any Dutch or Belgian readers who have used this lashing successfully?

13m high JOTA radio tower , Netherlands

JOTI/JOTA is an annual, international Scouting event. Scouts around the world use the Internet (Jamboree on the Internet) and radio (Jamboree on the Air) to communicate with each other. For good radio reception, a high tower is necessary. Loy, from the Netherlands, sent me this information about a 13 metre (thats 43 feet!) tower that he designed and built. I'll leave Loy to describe this project (click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the images):

" Last year's JOTA/JOTI our scouting group built a tower, designed by me, and built in a few days with 2-5 guys. It was 13 metres high, and made of poles no longer than 2.75 metres.

...

• first we made 24 tripods, each with the same dimensions.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Then we attached the middle poles of two tripod to each other, making a square
  
• We then attached another pole, perpendicular to the connected middle poles.










• Three of those elements were the folded together to make a layer, like this one: (with me on top, yay)










• we eventually stacked three of those layers on top of each other, then hoisting it up with a land rover, about the same way it is lowered in the movie.

The reason why this building method was chosen, is that, at first, I planned the tower to be build part by part, instead of completing it on the ground.

This year, I planning to make some sort of Skylon, inspired by one on your plog (pole blog :-) )."

See the rest of Loy's photographs (and a short film clip) here

Sliding Door Gateway

This gateway was designed by the Patrol Leader who designed the portcullis gateway featured as one of the first projects on this blog.

The theme for Kontiki this year was 007, and the gateway was intended to be the door to a James Bond-style villain's lair. The three panels are made from corrugated plastic sheeting stitched onto a pioneered framework. A pair of guide poles at the(the drawing on the left shows how the two guide poles are placed on either side of the upright column), and another pair of guide poles sits at the bottom, guide the central panel, which is the door. We had originally planned to use a castor discarded from a remote controlled model aeroplane but were unable to fasten the wheel to the frame properly. A steel bench with the legs folded away proved to be a good flat surface for the door to slide along.

To be able to slide smoothly, the door needed to have no pole butts projecting out the bottom. The designer eventually arrived at a very tidy solution to the problem: A 'bent' or '7' tent peg (these are standard tent pegs for guylines in South Africa) is used in the corner, and the two poles that meet are round lashed to the tentpeg with sisal. If you don't have this type of tent peg available, then a length of quarter inch (8mm) steel rebar with a right angle bent in it is a good substitute.