Minifig gateway at KonTiki 2017

I've featured gateways built by Harmellia Gardens Air Scouts before, and this Lego-inspired gateway at KonTiki 2017 is their latest design. Harmellia are using a synthetic hawser-laid rope, which, unlike braided polyprop ropes, behaves in a similar way to traditional sisal cordage. the head of the structure is bent from smaller thatching laths, and car tyres make up the hands.

(more sculptures, including dinosaurs, superheroes, biplanes and birds, on the sculpture tag)

Suspended Tensegrity Cube by 1st Halfway House Scouts

Photo courtesy Shane Anderson

1st Halfway House, a Scout troop in Midrand, South Africa, recently built this tensegrity cube suspended between A-frames. The cube is supsended at 4 points- two underneath, and two at the top of the structure.

Photos courtesy Shane Anderson

Shane Anderson, ATS at 1st Halfway House, says:

The planned outcome of the project was to build and suspend a 10Ft Tensegrity cube between 2 x 15Ft A-Frames, (Bottom Support) and stabilised on the top by 2 x 20Ft A-Frames.

The project got of to a good start with the initial idea of building and stabilizing the cube with gadget sticks (staves) before adding the tensioning ropes, however that soon fell apart as the cube was being tensioned as the gadget sticks broke under the strain. Liam and his team then reverted to plan B, which was to stabilize with 6Ft pioneering poles.

The A-Frames where constructed by the Junior Scouts and when all was in place the cube was lifted using the 15Ft A-Frames and 2 x block and tackles while being kept upright by guy ropes.

If you look in the cosntruction photo above, you'll see the 'jig' of light lathes that was used to hold the cub in place while it was built. As Shane says, it's a good idea, but you'll need to use heavier poles to handle the strain.

Photo courtesy Shane Anderson

Here's the model used to plan for this project. Models are really useful tools for pioneering, because they help you plan the project, picking up some problems before building at 1:1 scale.

Congratulations to Liam and his team for building this structure!

Photo courtesy Shane Anderson

Congratulations to Liam and his team for building this structure!

Akela 2016 "Wolf" Hypar Gateway

I recently had the privilege to spend some time at the international Akela 2016 camp outside Pretoria, and this is the main gateway to the campsite - built by Harmellia Gardens Air Scouts.

The camp was held to celebrate the centenary of the establishment of Cubs, and the gateway was designed to resemble the head of a wolf- with a snout and two ears. The ears and snout are formed with sisal and eyehooks in hyperbolic paraboloid shapes. More information on how to set out the sisal to form the shapes is available here.

You can download the SketchUp 3d model here.

"Roman blind" vertical opening gateway by Robin Hills

 Robin Hills Scout Group built this sliding portcullis gateway for KonTiki 2014. Robin Hills entered two teams, who placed 2nd and 3rd overall.

 The segmented door folds up out of the way when it's fully open, and slides down to cover the entrance when closed. The mechanism is similar to a Roman blind:

Two sets of ropes are tied to the door panels on each side. The dark blue set in this drawing are tied from the top of one panel to the next, fastening them to each other. The red set are tied to the bottom panel, and pass through holes at the top of all the other panels, before passing through a pulley at the top of the gateway.

 

 Pulling on the red ropes causes the bottom panel to move up, until it touches the next panel, when it stacks against it and starts pulling that one up as well. This continues until the entire door is smoothly stacked together at the top of the gateway.

Robin Hills built a sliding portcullis gateway for KonTiki 2011 that I blogged about here.

Pioneered T Rex Sculpture

Over the weekend, the East Rand Scout District in South Africa ran a public awareness day, where every group ran a public event to show that Scouting is flourishing in the community. Some groups held parades, some met in parks, some met outside shopping centres. My Rover Crew joined 1st Kempton Park Scouts outside a DIY shop in Kempton Park, and while they set up an information booth, we built this 4 metre high T-Rex.

The SketchUp model is available for you to download and view here.

Inspired by the pioneered animal sculptures of the Israeli Scout summer camps, I started with asmall sketch above and then spent some time figuring out how to make this design easy to build. Working in SketchUp, I put together a quick model with some sequence drawings that let us draw up a kit list and investigate the sequencing. Unlike the summer camp sculptures, we didn't have days to build this dinosaur, but only a few hours. The simple structure is based on a tripod, with an extension above for the head and shoulders, and an extension behind for the tail.  The head is made from bamboo, in two parts, with the jaw connected to a cotton cord that allows it to be opened and closed. The sequence drawing below was used to get the project built in the right order.

Sketches drawn in Paper on an iPad Mini with an Alupen stylus

Having sourced the materials from 1st Kempton Park, the crew set out to build the dinosaur in the car park. Very quickly, things came together, and by 11:00 the T-Rex's jaws were opening and closing above the crowd:

Ably led by our newest Rover, Thomas, we had a good morning building the dinosaur, and attracted a lot of attention towering over the rest of the displays at the Easter market. We're looking forward to building this again, and have some ideas for how we can improve it.

Arrowe Park Bridge by First Benoni Rovers

The Rover Crew of 1st Benoni Sea Scouts, the Puddle Pirates, built this bridge/gateway for the East Rand District BP Sunday Parade at Arrowe Park. It is modelled after the chapel at Arrowe Park, which is also the emblem of the East Rand District.

The Rovers spent one day building the project, which is built over and around an existing steel bridge. The gateway is supported by a series of guylines onto the bridge deck- not quite the cable stayed bridge I was talking about two weeks ago but very similar in appearance.

Congratulatiosn to the Puddle Pirates on building this gateway, the chapel at Arrowe Park is shown in the photograph below for comparison.

Dreamcatcher Gateway

The theme at KonTiki this year was the Wild West, and my troop, Ninth Benoni, decided to lean towards Indians rather than Cowboys. One of our Assistant Troop Scouters, Greg Gardiner, designed this gateway, and led the Scouts in harvesting the materials and building it over the course of a few weekends.

Greg started with a sketch of what he was aiming to achieve. The Scouts had made small dreamcatchers to decorate the raft with, and this large one ties the campsite design back into the raft design.

The first step in the process was harvesting willow branches from the trees that grow at our Scout hall. Willow has been harvested like this for centuries to make baskets, eel traps and other craft items, and the trees recover with no ill effects. A circle was staked out on the ground and the willow branches wrapped around this circle, braiding and twisting the branches together the whole time.

After the frame was complete, the string net was tied into the frame. It became clear that the will alone would not be strong enough to hold its shape, so a square frame of laths was added on the outside.

The entire gate was suspended from the gateway frame from a rope that had a twist put into it, so that if left to swing, the gate would automatically close itself.

Camp Gateways from the 1952 Welsh Jamboree

These drawings record four gateways from the Welsh Jamboree held at Picton Castle in August 1952. Drawn by G.R. Duce and published on page 200 of the 1953 Scout annual. Click the image to enlarge.

Robin Hills Portcullis Gateway

Robin Hills Scout troop built this portcullis gateway for their campsite at Kontiki 2011. Two A-frames support a gate that slides up along the slope of the front legs. This gate is a much bigger and sturdier portcullis than the one I blogged about back in 2006. The SketchUp model is available for download here.

Here is the gate closed at left, and open on the right.

A photograph of the gateway. Robin Hills went on to win Kontiki

22nd World Scout Jamboree - Pioneering report back

Main gateway at the 22nd World Scout Jamboree, Rinkaby, Sweden

As mentioned in the last post, I recently returned from the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in Rinkaby, Sweden. I was travelling as the Troop Scouter of Drakensberg troop, in the South African contingent. I had a fantastic trip, and in between looking after my troop (made up of Scouts from all around South Africa), trading badges, and meeting new Scouts from around the world, I got some time to take a few photos of pioneering projects.

The main gateway was an impressive structure, and shines out because of it's simplicity- a hypar gateway made with 15m long pole cut from the forest on site, and made using yellow and blue rope to pick out the shape of the Swedish flag. This is a great idea that would work for any of the Nordic cross flags, the St George's cross or the Cornish flag. Probably wouldn't work on our South African flag...

Many countries had food houses on the main square, with iconic structures from their home countries. The French food house had this Eiffel Tower gateway, the Dutch had a pioneered windmill, and the English food house was inside a castle!

Our troop camped in Autumn town, and at the centre of our town square was this pioneered Apple basket, representing the harvest in autumn.

A Finnish troop in our subcamp (facebook link) built this 6m high observation tower, which gave a great view of the surrounding campsites.

...and this 40m high tower gave a view of the entire campsite. It was built using four rooted trees as the corners, and had a scaffold staircase all the way up to the observation deck.

Most troops built simple campsites, because there were many places to explore, people to meet and activities to try out. This is my troop's campsite, with a simple gateway in the shape of Table Mountain, and two flagpoles.

A quick search on Google or Flickr will reveal thousands of photographs of the Jamboree, so there is plenty to explore. If you went to the Jamboree, I'd love to see your photographs, too.

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.

Portcullis Gateway

As you can see, this gateway has a movable gate that is used to open and close it. This gateway was designed by Kudus patrol and tested at our troop camp in June of 2005.

The equipment you will need for this:
2 x 4m poles (lightweight)
3 x 2m/3m laths
2 x long stakes for anchoring upright poles
6 x lashing ropes for frame
2 x sash pulleys/ keyrings / carabiners
sisal
nylon lacing cord

We are building a simple gateway, suitable for a patrol in camp or possibly for a troop on a weekend camp. What makes this gateway unusual is the mechanism for opening and closing the gate, which rises straight up like a portcullis in a castle.

The outer frame is made first, by square lashing the crossbar onto the two vertical spars. Once those 2 lashings are tied, lie the gate down where you want to place it, and hammer the stakes vertically in at the base of each pole- if you do it this way, you know you will have the right spacing for your stakes. While the stakes are being hammered in, you can work on attaching the gate to the gateway.

The gate is made by tying one lath under the other, using short pieces of sisal (if you have a scout group that recycles sisal you might have a number of short pieces of sisal).


To attach the gate to the gateway: in the top corners of the frame, you need to tie in the sash pulleys (first prize), carabiners (second prize) or keyrings (best effort) to run the cord through. Looking at the diagram, you will see that 2 cords are tied to the gate, then run up to the pulleys: the turquoise one runs up into the pulley and then across to the second pulley, while the red one runs straight up into that pulley and then down. Tying the red and turquoise ropes together with a stopper knot will stop the gate at the correct height.

Once you have attached the gate to the gateway, you can raise the gateway up and while your assistants holde the gateway up, you need to sheer lash the upright poles to the stake. Providing you are using long stakes (+- 1.2m or 4 feet) you will be able to have the gateway without any guylines. If the ground is very soft or your stakes or short, you may need to guy the frame.

Allow 3 hours for an inexperienceed patrol to build this gateway.