PE - issues with a rope bed ... was Bedding types

[david friedman]

At 4:21 PM +0200 10/3/00, Barclay, Peter C. MAJ wrote:

>My rope bed is different from Cariadoc's, and can be seen at
>www.greydragon.org/furniture/ropebed.html

...


>3) It seems very difficult to get the ropes tight enough with only one
>person.  I use someone to help me (after the bed is laced).  Each person
>sits on the ground on opposite sides of the bed.  I start by bracing against
>the rail with my feet and pulling the first rope as tight as I can.

...

This is part of the advantage of the bed design I am using. In 
effect, you have a pulley with a 12:1 mechanical advantage tightening 
the bed (minus some losses because the ropes aren't pulling at quite 
a right angle, and a good deal of frictional loss). You need that, 
because you are tightening the whole thing at once, so are pulling 
against ten strands of rope (but they are a good deal farther from 
right angles, which gives you some extra mechanical advantage).

See the article I have webbed at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Articles/rope_bed/rope_bed.htm

In the article, incidentally, I misstate the mechanical advantage; 
I'll fix it one of these days.

On the subject of lumps where the ropes cross ...  . The people from 
Mirkfaelin who have also made beds based on the same picture (one of 
them originally discovered the picture) knot the ropes at every 
intersection. That is a lot more work than interlacing them as I do, 
but presumably makes it easier to take the bed apart and then 
reassemble it.  Two of them slept on the beds at Pennsic, so I assume 
the knots aren't particularly uncomfortable.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.