Pioneered 'Strandbeest' walking machine

I posted a couple of weeks back wondering whether any Scouts could build one of Theo Jansen's walking creatures out of ropes and poles. As you can see in the video above, it has been done- be Shevet Hanasi in Tel Aviv.

Thanks to Dor Posner (who first introduced me to the large-scale brand of pioneering Israeli Scouts practice) for sending this in.

Northern District Pioneering projects

These projects are all built by troops in the Northern District in Gauteng, South Africa. This district holds regular inter-troop Pioneering competitions, as well as a Scouter's competition. The above photo shows the winning Scouters from 2008, 1st Athol, in front of their 35ft-span suspension bridge, built in 4.5 hours.


Included here are two tall towers built as Springbok construction projects and a windmill from a district pioneering competition. Shakir, Scouter at First Athol troop, who supplied these photos, writes that "if it's not hard to build, it's not worth building". This is the opposite end of the spectrum from my beginner's project last month, and definitely something to try with ambitious Scouts.

Vleermuis tower

"De Vleermuis" (Bat) Scout Group from Belgium built this tower, a relative of the Hourglass Tower, during December of last year. Klipdas sent me these photos, and you can see them and many more in the Flickr group here.

Sailing from California to Hawaii on 15,000 plastic bottles

JUNK is a raft made from recycled and discarded materials, that is sailing from California to Hawaii to highlight the problems caused in the ocean by discarded plastics.


Built only from discarded materials, and held together using knots, this is a perfect example of modern pioneering,even if the materials used might not what we traditionally think of as pioneered materials. The beginnings of the substructure are visible here, with aluminium spars being fastened together with nylon kern-mantel rope.

While 'traditional' Trans-pacific rafts use a palm and timber hut for shelter, JUNK has the fuselage of a light aircraft that provides shelter.


The floats that provide buoyancy are used soft-drink bottles held together by large nets. Some of the ropes on board are even made out of braided plastic bags.

As I write this JUNK has around 999 miles to go before she lands in Hawaii- and even this far out at sea they are surrounded by plastic litter. Head over to the blog to keep up to date with their news, posted from the middle of the Pacific Ocean!

(all images on this post are courtesy junkraft.blogspot.com)

Japanese lashings

Japanese traditional architecture and crafts are a great source for inspiration about lashings and pioneered structures. The images above and below are from the book 'Structure and Form in Japan' (apparently out of print but possibly available from Amazon.com)


Flickr user Anthony Grimley took this beautiful photograph of a fence outside a tea house:


And of course the Japanese Square lashing and Philipino Diagonal lashing were introduced to Scouting by Scouters in Asia.