Poles
Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:10 am
The tent/tarp variety not the Eastern European nation.
This is more a bit of recycling than anything inventive. I have a very old Wild Country SuperNova geodesic tent, so old that the fabric is UV degraded. Needing a couple of poles for setting up my tarp (I've been using the bike or trees up till now) I decided to convert one of the poles (they are foldable) into a couple of short sections.
One of the criteria was that the pole sections should fit in to my wife's frame bag since she is fairly short and consequently the frame bag is small but 360mm sections will just fit. The existing poles have a male plug at each end to fit in to grommets on the tent so I could make both new poles out of one existing pole, also each middle section had a joining ferrule in place at one end so by cutting the excess off each section I would end up with two sections with a male plug at one end and three sections with a joining ferrule at one end.
A bit of hacksawing and filing off the burrs and I ended up with two poles: a two section pole 70cm long and a 3 section pole 105cm long. Neither have the bottom end sealed off and they aren't held together with shock cord but since they will be used in compression the latter isn't much of a problem. I think I've got some plastic "saucers" that will solve the bottom end problem and also help spread the load when setting up on softer ground. Total weight: 100g
This is more a bit of recycling than anything inventive. I have a very old Wild Country SuperNova geodesic tent, so old that the fabric is UV degraded. Needing a couple of poles for setting up my tarp (I've been using the bike or trees up till now) I decided to convert one of the poles (they are foldable) into a couple of short sections.
One of the criteria was that the pole sections should fit in to my wife's frame bag since she is fairly short and consequently the frame bag is small but 360mm sections will just fit. The existing poles have a male plug at each end to fit in to grommets on the tent so I could make both new poles out of one existing pole, also each middle section had a joining ferrule in place at one end so by cutting the excess off each section I would end up with two sections with a male plug at one end and three sections with a joining ferrule at one end.
A bit of hacksawing and filing off the burrs and I ended up with two poles: a two section pole 70cm long and a 3 section pole 105cm long. Neither have the bottom end sealed off and they aren't held together with shock cord but since they will be used in compression the latter isn't much of a problem. I think I've got some plastic "saucers" that will solve the bottom end problem and also help spread the load when setting up on softer ground. Total weight: 100g
