Lego machines to make rope

Most pioneering projects (but by no means all) use rope or cordage, so understanding how rope is made is a useful part of pioneering. There are some simple ways of making rope, but these Lego projects by Nico71 take ropemaking to another level.

The yellow machine winds a 3-strand hawser-laid rope, using Lego Technic components. You can see how the Technic gears are used to guide the three colours of yarn out of the spools and wind them into a cord before they are wound in the other direciton to lay up against each other in a rope.
Nico71 says:

After my mechanical loom is 2012, I wanted to build more specific weaving and braiding machine. After months of research, I came back with a new idea based on rope maker : a braiding machine which can make of course rope but also wristband ! Then, I have started in April of 2013 to make some prototype of weaving and braiding machine and succeeded in making one truly functional in December of 2013.

The Red machine is more complicated- it makes a braided rather than a hawser-laid rope, and is also faster.

Nico71 provides free (simple) and paid (highly detailed) versions of the building instructions for both of these, as well as a Youtube channel with demos of these and many other Lego machines.

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!

Bamboo arches in Ghana- Haduwa Arts + Culture Institute

Photograph copyright Baerbel Mueller

This bamboo stage pavilion was built for The Haduwa Arts and Culture Institute in Ghana by [applied] Foreign Affairs, an architecture lab at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. A group of students built the project as part of their architecture classes, after researching the project in Austria and on site in Ghana.

Normally, when we build pioneered structures for Scouting, we use the bamboo the way we would any other pole- as a rigid, straight pole. This structure makes great use of the flexibility of bamboo to curve the arches, and also uses the idea of 'bundling' smaller poles together to make larger arches. While this structure might be much bigger than the normal Scout projects, there is an opportunity to learn from the way the students worked with bamboo in this project.

Construction details. All photographs copyright Baerbel Mueller

Project credits:
Client: Haduwa Arts and Culture Institute architecture and concept [Applied] Foreign Affairs, Department of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Project Leader: Baerbel Mueller
Project Team: Christian Car, Joseph Hofmarcher, Ilias Klis, Joana Lazarova, Ewa Lenart, Ioana Petkova, Philipp Reinberg, with Antonella Amesberger, Clelia Baumgartner, Stephan Guhs, Frida Robles, Andrea axis
Guest lecturers - bamboo construction: Jörg Stamm, Construction: Franz Sam, Structural: Klaus Bollinger, roof: Manora Auersperg, Christoph Kaltenbrunner, Performance Arts: Daniel Aschwanden


More information:
Designboom article
Architektur journal (Deutsch with English translation)

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.

Bottlecutter2.0: making 'rope' from soft drink bottles

Image copyright Advocate Egerov

From Russia, via Youtube, comes this technique for converting a PET soft drink bottle into a strong 'tape' that can be used for lashings. Адвокат Егоров (Advocate Egerov) has two videos that explain how to build the Bottlecutter2.0 device to strip the bottles, and demonstrates how to use the strips to make lashings. Because PET shrinks when heated, he uses a hot air gun to 'frap' the lashings and tighten up the structures.

Image copyright Advocate Egerov

The first video (available with subtitles English subtitles) includes some basic lashings and instructions on making the machine to strip the bottle:

 While the second one goes through some detailed techniques and a rather elaborate willow branch chair:

Thanks to Clarke over at ScoutmasterCG for sharing this on one of his live chats- I recommend heading over there on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning (US time/afternoon European time)

'CatDrill' - quick pioneering with pre-drilled poles and light synthetic cord.

Catdrill 'lashing' details

'CatDrill' is an Italian technique for staving or lightweight pioneering, that involves preparing the staves to be used by drilling a small hole and notching the surface of the pole. Lightweight synthetic kernmantle rope is then used to tie the staves together, using stopper knots on the starting end of the rope, and simple slipped hitches to end the lashings. Their English website has a series of PDF documents that guide you through the basics, from preparing your poles, to the different types of lashings, and some basic projects. The original, Italian site has some more projects that are not yet translated into English, but the pictures speak for themselves.

image courtesy Scout Trento 1

According to the authors, they developed the technique for the following reasons:

CatDrill is born for solving the following problems:

• the price of the building material (wood) and the difficulties found to get it from the forester;
• the price of the rope;
• to avoid the hazard of moving heavy wooden poles (and the tools needed to work with them);
• to avoid ties, joints and toggle realized in the wrong way (we saw them too much times in pictures & co);
• to practice pioneering during our one or two days trip, doing it quickly and avoiding to use the ground both as a chair and as a table;
• to approach how a boy thinks, who wants to see concrete results as soon as possible.

1at Blairgowrie demonstrating Catdrill at Gauteng Region training workshop

Senior Scouts and Scouters from 1st Blairgowrie Scout Group recently introduced me to the technique and demonstrated it at a pioneering workshop at Arrowe Park towards the end of 2015. The technique saves time, produces strong structures and is worth investigating if you have some light staves/laths you can set aside for this technique.

There is a similar, more permanent technique called 'Froissartage' using carpentry jointing techniques which I have written about before.

Hat-tip to ScoutmasterCG and 1st Blairgowrie Scout Group.

Kontiki raft mass calculator

Gauteng KonTiki is coming up next weekend, and the Gauteng Scout Water Activities Advisory  Council, along with Puddle Pirates Rover Crew, has developed this Excel spreadsheet which helps calculate the mass of a raft, and ultimately calculate how deep a raft sits in the water. It takes into account the weight of poles, ropes, barrels, decking boards, equipment and crew to arrive at the total load which it then compares against the buoyancy provided by the barrels.

This tool is being offered for download at the KonTiki website for use by entrants to KonTiki, but hsould be useful to any Scout raft designers. Note that KonTiki is held on sheltered, still, inland waters, so the buoyancy is calculated with that in mind.

The tool is metric, but for rough estimation purposes for Imperial units, 1kg = approximately 2 pounds, and 100mm = almost exactly 4 inches.

Release notes from the website:

Alan Ford has arranged this tool as a safety measure to ensure that the raft being built will have sufficient buoyancy provided for by barrels, before being launched. This will aid you and also ensure that the raft is sufficiently manoeuvrable should you need to be towed by a rescue vessel.  
If you have any questions or would like Alan to review it, please e-mail it to alanford@global.co.za when you have populated the final version or bring it to Kontiki on a memory stick, Alan will go through it at the event.

Dissipate - tensegrity tower at AfrikaBurn 2015 festival

Dissipate is a project being planned by a group of architects and engineers (including a few former Scouts) for the upcoming AfrikaBurn Burning Man regional event near Cape Town, South Africa.

The tower consists of an hourglass tower with a tensegrity on top of it, gradually 'dissipating' into the sky. Here's the team's own description of the project:
 Dissipate represents the impermanence of life; how structures, whether physical or notional, tend to move, transform, morph and eventually deconstruct and dissipate.
We will be constructing the primary structure using traditional pioneering technology (poles and ropes). The artwork's main structure consists of two intersecting tripods (each approximately 4 meters in height). This structure is then clad in a series of angled planks that get spaces wider apart as they reach the top at which point the structure changes into a tensegrity (structure consisting of compression members held in space by tension wires) to give the illusion of planks dissolving into space.
The structure physically celebrates structure and the morphing from a primal and very basic structural system into a new and complex structural system.
 You can keep up with the project on Twitter and Facebook. Right now, they're in the last few days of their fundraising drive, so head over to their site and see what they're offering as rewards.

Raft Barrel Lashings

Kontiki season is picking up here in Southern Africa, with Windhoek, Namibia hosting their event this weekend, and the Western Cape hosting theirs next weekend.

The diagram above shows one way of fastening barrels that worked well for my troop. You can double up with a second rope starting at the opposite corners to make it really secure. Apart from the ropes, the spacing of your poles is really important to make sure that the barrel sits securely on the raft base.

 drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen

Merry Christmas from Ropes and Poles

Merry Christmas! If you're celebrating today, I hope you have a great day surrounded by family, and a blessed year ahead.

This tree is decorated with Monkey's Fists, tied in 8mm sisal rope, with eye-spliced ends.

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)

Bamboo Scaffolding- government guidelines for pioneered structures in Hong Kong

Photo courtesy David Boté Estrada

Bamboo has been used for centuries to build scaffolding in East Asia, and is still in use today- everyday pioneering visible in every city. Where there are industries, there are standards, and the Hong Kong government publishes the document Guidelines on the Design and Construction of Bamboo Scaffolds, which regulates every details of how bamboo should be used in scaffolding there.

Figure 1 from Guidelines on the Design and Construction of Bamboo Scaffolds

Amongst other things, this regulation controls:
The type of bamboo-

The commonly used bamboo types are Kao Jue and Mao Jue. They should be 3 to 5 years old and air-dried in vertical positions under indoor condition for at least 3 months before use. The nominal length of both Kao Jue and Mao Jue is 6 m. 

Shear lashings for joining poles-

the distance between two knottings on the overlapping portion of the bamboo members should not be greater than 300 mm, and the tail of one bamboo member should be connected to the head of the other. Diagram 9 illustrates the proper connection of bamboo members for bracings/rakers, ledgers, posts/standards used in a bamboo scaffold.

And even inspection for quality control- 

Bamboo is a natural material and it expands and contracts as the moisture content changes. Proper workmanship, close supervision and frequent inspection are required to ensure the structural integrity of the bamboo scaffolds.

 While these regulations might not apply in your country (and might even allow for structures that are illegal/not suitable for Scouts in your country) they are an interesting read if you are looking at building large pioneered structures. 

Cloverleaf lashing video

Ploeg Technieken in Belgium originated the clover-leaf lashing. I've written before about using supporting jigs to hold the poles in place, but Ploeg Technieken have a YouTube channel that has this excellent video showing how it's done. The captions won't help if you don't speak Flemish (or Dutch, or Afrikaans) but the video is fairly self-explanatory.

Measuring the height of an object with similar triangles

This technique for measuring the height of an object is an old one- there is a very similar drawing in Scouting For Boys. In principle, it is very simple: by measuring the distance on the ground, we can calculate the height of the tree by comparing it to the height measured on a stave.
In this simplified metric version:
Measure of 9 units (they can be anything- metres, feet, stave lengths, even Scout lengths)
Place a stave upright on that point, and measure one more unit.
Placing your head on the ground, look up to the top of the tree. Make a mark on the stave. The height of the tree will be ten times the height marked on the stave.

This can be fairly accurate, providing that the tree is roughly upright and the ground is basically level


drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen

The Marshmallow Challenge

drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen

The Marshmallow Challenge is an indoor, patrol-based, teamwork and creativity challenge that can be run with minimal equipment and twenty minutes of time.

Developed by Tom Wujec of AutoDesk (Producers of the FormIt app and AutoCAD amongst many,many others), this challenge has been used by large and small companies, schools and kindergartens, as well as scout groups around the world.
The rules are simple: each team has 18 minutes to build the tallest possible freestanding tower (i.e. Not supported by anything other than the floor) with the marshmallow at the top. My Rover Crew recently ran this challenge with every Scout patrol in our district. Here are the results as an idea of the heights that are possible:

Here is a video of Tom discussing the challenge and what it teaches about teamwork:

Froissartage: French Scout pioneering with permanent joints

credits (clockwise from top left) Amazon, Scoutwiki, Scouts-Europe, Carton, Bricolage, Decoration

Discussions around the setting out posts led me to something new: the French practice of building pioneered projects with carpentry joints instead of ropes. The construction is inspired by traditional rural furniture and farm equipment, built without nails. The tools needed are a saw, auger, chisel and mallet.



Michel Froissart was a Scouter in the 1930s in France, who adapted simple jointing methods- primarily Mortise and Tenon and 'Flat' joints - for pioneering. Froissartage, grand jeu dans la nature (French Edition) is the classic reference book and is still in print (in French only, unfortunately for those of us who don't speak French).  The French Scoutwiki Froissartage page (in English translation) has more information.

More methods for finding the middle of a pole

After publishing last week's post on finding the midpoint of a pole, I had a few responses on the blog, and a good discussion over on 1st Facebook Scout Group, about alternate methods, and here are a few of the other methods suggested by various people. Knowing more than one way of doing something is always useful, so here they are:

First up is this simple method, from Jean-Marie at 1st Facebook Scout Group:

"Let's suppose I do not have a rope long enough, but just a stick/small rope, even smaller than the half of the long one. I set it at one end, perpendicular to the pole, and mark the point (usually, leaving a scout standing there). I do the same thing at the other end of the pole BUT ON THE OTHER SIDE. The imaginary line between the 2 scouts cuts the pole in its middle. Thus, when the Scouts see me on the line between themselves an their opposite pal while I walk along the length of the pole, I have found the middle.That's it ! The longer the pole, the longer the stick, the more accurate."

These three methods are all variations on direct measurement - measuring with a rope and folding the rope in half, using a tape measure and halving it, or pacing out with a shoe, a shorter stick, a ruler or any other item.

Finally, the centre of balance / centre of gravity for a pole can be found by a few methods, but this is a simple and quick one courtesy of Jean-Marie at 1st Facebook - put a short section of round pole underneath the pole, then push the pole forward or backwards until it balances like a see-saw. If you have a pole without much taper, this will get you close to the midpoint of the pole too, but if the pole tapers a lot, you'll be better off using one of hte methods above to find the exact middle.

drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen

Finding the middle of a pole

Measuring and setting out are important in pioneering projects, but it's not always easy to use a tape measure and spirit level for measurements. Over the next few posts, I'll cover some good on-site methods for setting out a project.
The most common measuring task in pioneering is probably finding the middle of a pole. Carl Nitzsche of First Benoni Sea Scouts showed me this method, for which you'll need the pole you want to find the middle of, and one other pole at least half the length of the first one.

What we'll be doing is measuring where we think the middle is, checking our distance from each end every time. When we have it right, checking form the left and the right will give us the same point, because the middle is the same distance from both ends.

Let's work through the drawings:
1) line the end of the small pole up with one end. Lay it down next to the long pole and mark the end position on the long pole, either with chalk, a pencil or a blade.
2) now flip the pole over and line it up with the other end, marking the position against the long pole. The two marks are shown by the two green lines. If we had guessed well, the two green lines would be lined up. In this case, we haven't, so we move onto the next step:
3) pick a point on the short pole that looks closer to the middle of the long pole, and mark it on the long pole.
4)  now flip the short pole over, line it up with the other end and lay the pole down, checking where the new position is. In this example, we guessed well and the two blue marks line up perfectly. That mark is the middle of the pole. If you don't get it right on the second iteration, you can keep going, checking the same distance from both ends, until you find the proper distance.

drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen