Pioneering at Pukkelpop festival

image courtesy Universiteit Hasselt

This pioneered structure at Pukkelpop 2014 in Belgium was seen by thousands of people during the annual music festival. Designed by Jakob Ghisjebrechts, it was built with the help of Gouw Limberg, a regional Scouting organization in Belgium

design model. Image courtesy Universiteit Hasselt

The pavilion was designed as part of the first year architecture programme at Universiteit Hasselt, and was the winning entry by student Jakob Ghijsebrechts. The pavilion was home to Salon Fou, a hair salon for people at Pukkelpop to get a festival haircut. You can listen to an interview with Jakob (in Flemish) on Youtube here.

image courtesy Universiteit Hasselt

(I've already told you that speaking Dutch or Flemish is good for your pioneering skills)

Thor Heyrdahls' Kon Tiki - model by 6th Kettering Senior Scouts

From p702 of the May 29 1952 'The Scout' -
"Our recent article on the Kon Tiki Expedition evidently interested the 6th Kettering Senior Scouts who decided to make a model of the raft. Their effort is seen here on shot at the recently held Kettering Scout Exhibition."

Model Pioneering : Guillotine

From the cover of THE SCOUT, No 2,313, August 21, 1952 sixty years ago this week: Cambridgeshire Senior Scouts with their entry for a Model Building Competition

Kontiki 2012: Main Stage

Kontiki 2012 is underway, 36 teams are busy building their rafts down at the waterfront at Arrowe Park, and will be launching on Saturday morning. I'll post more about the rafts later, but there is a structure down at the waterfront that I'm featuring now.

The main stage was designed and built by Gregory Weeks from First Benoni Sea Scouts, and fitting with the Viking theme of Kontiki 2012, is designed as the prow of a submerged boat sticking out of the ground. It stand roughly 6m (18 feet) high.

The stage was built over two weekends, and tilted up into position as the last part of the construction sequence. The whole structure is anchored with a series of stakes below the deck of the stage, square lashed to the base structure.

More to follow tomorrow on the rafts and campsites...

Spiral tower

Jason Raad from First Bergvliet Sea Scouts in Cape Town built this tower as his Springbok construction project. It's a spiral staircase, anchored around a central flagpole. All of the uprights are firmly bedded in the ground, set into holes made with a post hole auger.
This tower draws some inspiration from a similar tower built by one of the Finnish troops at the recent World Scout Jamboree, where Jason was in my troop. The planning model is finely detailed and worth a look in it's own right.

Model Pioneering from Malaysia

Keat Lee is a former Scout from Malaysia who has shared some model pioneering photos with me. The five models featured in this post are all of Keat's own design- thanks for sharing them with us!

Keat uses cotton thread to tie the lashings, and uses real square and diagonal lashings, not the elastic band cheat version. Working on his own, the models above took around 2 weeks each to make, while the detailed model below took about a month.

Kontiki 2007: Raft Model

Following up on a few posts about model pioneering, here is my troop's model raft from 2007's Kontiki event (and the reason for my earlier 1:15 downloadable scale rule).

Our raft crew leader (and his family) put a lot of effort into building this model. The structure is accurately scaled, with all lashings tied properly (not the quick way), poles colour-coded the same as their full-sizecounterparts and barrel colour carefully matched. There are also many 'props', such as fire extinguishers, cooler boxes, lifejackets, anchors, running lights and a painstakingly tied cargo net (folded up towards the back of the photograph above). Aside from looking good, the model serves as a tool to show the rest of the troop how the tasks are to be completed eg. by showing them how barrels are secured, how decking is tied down or where to place safety equipment.
Finally, a side-by-side comparison of the model and the full-size raft (raft photo by Hooligans):


(In case you were wondering, the theme for Kontiki this year was 007, hence the Bond girl sitting on the Aston Martin)

Scale ruler for pioneering models: 1 in 15 Kontiki edition

Kontiki, the annual raft-building competition in our province, is coming up in the beginning of March. The competition rules require a 1:15 scale model of the raft to be built. This is an unusual scale- the nearest metric scales are 1:10 and 1:20, while the nearest imperial scales are 1':1" (1:12) and 1.5':1" (1:18). I drew up a ruler (PDF, 642k) to help my Scouts build the model, and have made it available for anyone else who needs one. The ruler has metric (to 6.5 metres) and imperial (to 21 feet) measurements: although most things in South Africa are measured in the metric system, pioneering poles are typically available in 3 foot increments. The diamter and height of a 200 litre steel barrel, as well as the maximum structure height allowed by Gauteng Kontiki rules, are also marked.

The PDF file makes 2 rulers, and has full instructions for printing at the correct size.

Note: if you are interested in SketchUp: the lineweights were all generated in SketchUp, using the 'depth cue' edge mode, and switching the camera to parallel projection- three lineweights were established in the drawing, on seperate vertical levels. The nearest layer to the camera was used for the thickest lines, and the furthest for the finest lines. Here is a view of the model that shows how the lineweight 'layers' were set up:

Final page setup and layout was done in the new SketchUp Pro add-on package, LayOut.

Quick Model Pioneering - elastic band lashings

This post at Scoutmaster blog reminded me about a very fast way of tying lashings for model pioneering. Instead of using string for the lashings, use elastic bands:

First, lay the two dowel sticks out and hook a rubber band over the end of one of them.

Run the band over the top dowel and under the bottom one, back round the top of the top dowel. PULL the band all the time so that it is tight when you are wrapping it around.


After one circuit, take off for frapping turns. Wrap the band around the lashing, making sure you pull it tight all the time. Go around at least one full circuit, and keep going around until the elastic band has been used up.


Stretch the elastic around and slip the end loop over the end of the dowel (ideally not the one you started on). That's it- lashing tied.


I was first taught this method in 1997 at Gilten PLTU in Johannesburg, but I suspect that it is much older than that- probably going back to the 1940s or 1950s. A single lashing takes around 15 seconds using this method, compared to around 5 minutes for a real lashing, so the time saved makes it possible to include model pioneering as a patrol activity in a troop meeting.