taimatsu no monogatari

(This is another in my series of Links On A Topic posts: others are Tunnel Books, Medieval Costume, and Songs I like.)

For Shards, I have been talking about making a thing to put latex swords on, off the ground - otherwise they get left standing in corners on their points (very bad) or on the ground getting trodden on. From my Guiding days I remembered making things at camp out of sticks and string, and since I like string very much indeed I decided it would be good to track down information and instructions on such things. Here, therefore, is a handy collection of 'camp gadgets' you can make with rope, sticks, string and so on. Some are more useful and more practical than others. None of them, sadly, is a weapon rack, but it's easy to adapt the principles to such purposes, and I have a couple of ideas to try out.

The activity is called, in Scouting/Guiding, 'Pioneering' (and you can do merit badges in it); the name for a knot tying two or more spars together is a 'lashing'. I have bought a large quantity of very cheap, very rough brown string, which we can use to make things with. Robert and I also have decent rope, and a book on knots which I'll bring.

As many of the pages use the same set of drawings of camp gadgets I will link to the images rather than to lists which may repeat each other. I'm including various things which may seem totally bizarre, but the principles on which they are constructed may well prove helpful.

Wikipedia overview of pioneering, with some handy links on knots
The three basic pioneering structures
A page with excellent lashing diagrams
Fire Bucket holders
Lantern tripod
Tool rack
Bowl stand, clothes line, filter bin, and more
Washbasin stand
Ladders, and a travois to be used as a stretcher
Really sensible things to do with bin-bags
Catapult! (There *must* be a use for this at Shards!)
Knots and lashings
Lots of PDFs on knots, whipping, and pioneering topics