It's handy to have a draftsman in the house. I told Dode what I was thinking and we sat down in front of Autocad to draw it out. That way we knew we'd get the dimensions right.
It's similar to an obstacle on the TV show Wipeout. The boys have to walk across the balance beam while avoiding the crank. If it touches them, they have to start over. No ducking under either, that's cheating! Once Dode built it, my children had a fun time testing it out. A den leader will have to turn the crank. We learned during testing that they'll need to be blindfolded or facing away from the youth. It's too tempting to slow the crank down to help them succeed!
Miriam tries out "The Crank"
If you build this, you also need to make some sort of finish mark on the balance beam. Miriam likes to cheat by jumping off early in order to avoid the crank.
The 2x4's will be planted in the ground at day camp, so they'll eventually be vertical supports, not horizontal like in the photo. We didn't want to add three holes to the grass just for a photo!
In the drawing above, Dode specifies what size hole he drilled. I wanted mine to be portable and reusable so we started with hole and kept a few joints in the PVC unglued. After the kids hit it a few times and twisted it, we modified it with a slot and glued all the joints. We used a bolt to keep the pipe in while turning it.
Love that purple glue!
I'm planning on painting it to look like bamboo, we'll see how it turns out!
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