Hey guys,
Saw this on Youtube and thought WOW, this guy makes his own rope :eek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYw7V4AAPX0
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Hey guys,
Saw this on Youtube and thought WOW, this guy makes his own rope :eek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYw7V4AAPX0
Wow - thanks for sharing that. I want to be him when I grow up.
Thanks.....that brought back some memories. I spent eight weeks in Guatemala a couple of years ago, studying spanish. I believe he was speaking an indian dialect. I've seen hammocks made directly from the plant in Puerto Rico. They were considered collector's items that were commissioned and sold for a helluva lot more than $25. (I did love the logic for his pricing)
Miguel
He should go to Walmart and get some ripstop. He could still sell them for $25and make $22.
Peace Dutch
Ahh, but the trip to WalMart would cost more than $25 :D
now i liked that. cool!!!
Very cool! Makes me want to take a nap.
Emilio is speaking a mayan dialect. And he is referring to Belizean Dollars not US Dollars, so his months work goes for around $13 USD.
These hammocks were readily available at almost any marketplace during my Peace Corps days in Guatemala (June 92 - Oct 95). The sellers usually bought them from campesinos like Emilio out in the sticks and jacked their prices up once they got them to town.
The string usually wears through where your butt sits and then the whole thing will start to unravel. But, they are totally biodegradable and are usually dyed different colors.
The ones made from nylon string or twine last longer but still wear through with time and unravel. Same technique to make them.
Only the knotted ones wont totally unravel if they develope a hole. The knotted ones are usually made by fisherman or around fishing villages. The inmates in the local jails make both varieties on the Pacific coast. The guards by the twine buy them twine, which the inmates split and spin into string and then knot or weave items that the guards sell on the outside.
Enough of my babbling, gotta go to work. Wade
not babbling, interesting stuff. i think it would be neat to learn to make twine out of local plants just for the experience, but i doubt i would ever take the time to make a hammock...especially considering all the work involved & that the hammock would be kinda temporary:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by steene
A good friend from childhood had to make a twine hammock for girl scouts years ago - all of the girls worked on it and got a badge for doing it. The moms bought the twine and the girls had to weave it. It was very similar to the one in this video. (I was at her house the day they did this watching her baby brother so her mom could focus on the scout activities.)
Emilo mentioned the difficulty of starting it. The mothers had this paper card to get it started - they poked the twine thru from the back and threaded it (sort of like lacing shoes) using guides on the paper to show where it should go. They threaded the twine as directed and then ripped off the paper card which left the first three rows or so started and then handed it over to the girls. The mothers also finished the other end with a similar paper card.
They did it in a single afternoon.
That is amazing. It's a shame skills like that will be lost.
That was great, I'd like to go there and learn how to do it.
Wonder if any of the girl scout kits for doing this are still around or if Emilo or someone like him could be persauded to demonstrate exactly how to start and finish such a hammock.
my wife is a girl scout leader, so I will ask her if they have something like that still. What amazed me was the fact that he knew exactly which cactus, how to roast it, get the fibers, and then how to spin the fibers to make rope. You can tell that he really loves hammocks :)
Thanks Preacher. This happened many, many years ago - like the mid-1900's - so they may not still have these.
Dino, My wife found this book entitled The American Girls Handy Book. It says that on page 159 of it, it has how to make hammocks and the materials required. Here is the link http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1586...3D#reader-link. My wife says that she would like to get the book to share with her 3rd graders next year.
I was shown how to make a woven style just prior to leaving Guatemala in late 95. I will see if I can find my old notebooks and try and make one.
No guarantees, it has been over 10 years ago now. The major differences that I remember from this video are: Emilio used a vertical frame and I was shown using a horizontal (two stakes pounded into the ground), he used no shuttle or needle to hold his string. Other than that everything else looks basically the same. They did not show how he did the ends.
I am an assistant Cubmaster of my son's Cub Scout Pack and the next few weeks are full of day camps, campouts and other activities. So it will have to take the backseat to these other activities. After that "manos a la obra".
be sure to take pictures when you get around to it. that would be great. ...timQuote:
Originally Posted by steene
:) now thats awesome:cool: neo
First this is a great video.
Yeah it's sad. One thing I dislike about modern western (American) society is that everything has this plastic/prefab/manufactured look. I mean I make my own backpack and people get impressed.Quote:
Originally Posted by headchange4u
Same thing with music. There was one point in time if you wanted to hear music, you had to play it. No there are stereos and CDs and MP3s.
I still buy vinyl (records). I have always been a stereo and music buff, and while I love my iPod and it's convenience of carrying 8,000+ songs in my pocket, nothing beats dropping the needle on my hi-fi system. Nothing beats live music though.Quote:
Originally Posted by funbun
Are you one of those lucky folks who can actually hear the difference between vinyl and digital? My ears were never that good, they've long since gotten worse.
Personally I hated vinyl back when it was the only real choice available. I HATE listening to all of the pops and ticks. :mad: Don't even get me started on how much more convenient digital is to listen to.
I'd always record a homemade cassette the 1st time I played an album, then put up with the hissy tape. When the digital revolution finally caught up to me I still had some great quality LPs to digitize. :D Great for the obscure stuff I love that never got re-released to CD's
I'm with you on the live music thing. Nothing like a great concert, unless it's a pro recording of a great concert you've already attended. :)
Yes, I can. Music is my background. Vinyl has a much "warmer" sound. I'm not sure how to explain it my something is "lost" in the digital processing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oz-sie
If you get pass the crack and pops, the vinyl sounds much better to me. It almost sounds live. Although I prefer the convenience of digital.
However, there has been a big push to try and incorporate those old/analogue sounds into the digital stuff, especially with microphones. Lots of people still like the old vacuum tube amps and mics. They really do sound better. More low end I guess. But many companies are taking what made those old mics great and incorporating that sound into modern transistor mics. that way you get the old sound but not all the pop and cracks and stuff.
That seems to be a trend in our society: kind of a blend of the old with the new.
I can hear a huge difference between vinyl and CD's/digital media. Honestly the sound difference is pretty apparent if you have a decent quality stereo sound system and a good turntable. Pops and clicks are artifacts of dirty/scratched records or poor quality needles. If you have a clean record that is pristine you shouldn't hear hardly any pops or clicks.
I also love tube equipment. I actually own a tube CD player if you can believe that.
I have to agree that vinyl is on a totally different level from all digital media. Something gets lost on digital media.
Everything is lost on digital music. Think of an MP3 as a "Cliff Notes" version of the music. The format for CDs is nothing more than a sampling of the music. The only reason for this was to be able to fit the "same" amount of information into a smaller file. Granted, most people can't tell the difference, but it was a matter of principal to those of us who still try to find good needles. MP3s took the CD formatting to a whole new level of sampling. What you hear on your iPod (love mine) is only a shadow of what was recorded.
Any recording is only a sampling...and a good digital recording is much more faithful to the actual sound than vinyl, because digital media can store so much more information. More samples = better recreation. I'm not saying MP3s are somehow superior; they sacrifice a LOT of quality for small storage space. I'm talking GOOD digital recordings.
A lot of people like vinyl BECAUSE of its flaws, though, and that's just a personal preference. Much like tube vs. solid state processors...solid state equipment can produce much cleaner, more faithful sound - and is more precise to work with, electronically - but many people simply prefer tubes because of the tones created by their reproduction flaws.
PoTAToes ---- PoTOToes,
Emilo Choco likes making his own hammocks, I like making my own hammocks, others like to buy their hammocks, but we all love hangin :)
I seem to have a way of de-railing perfectly good hammocking threads. :eek:
I wish I had your ears folks. Even I can tell the difference between good recordings and most MP3 files, but I can't tell digital from analog. . . .
HeadChange: Wish I had the $ for a system that posh. A tube CD player. Wow. No wonder you 'roll your own' gear, you've already spent all your $ on the important stuff! :D
I'd certainly like to know how to make an Emilio style hammock for when I get stranded on a tropical island. Being good at making fiber from the local fauna would be worth the price of admission alone. For now I'm feeling good about being able to sew my own out of store-bought fabric. :) Small steps . . . . . Even THIS ability puts me/us light years ahead of most of the folks in this incredibly specialized culture. :(
Mom TRIED to teach me to sew a little, at least enough to make simple repairs to my clothes, but I wouldn't listen. She wanted to teach me to sew and cook and she wanted the girls to be able to change their own plugs and oil, basic self sufficiency type stuff. The world was a much more generalized (sane) place back in the stone age when I grew up. . . . . .
Oh well. At least I had enough sense to listen to her regarding the cooking . She'd probably be pleased to know that her testosterone impaired boy finally 'got it' and oiled up her old Kenmore to make something useful when neither one of her girls has. Too bad she never lived to see it. . . . She'll laugh when I catch up to her and let her know! :)