So, as announced on the german version of this blog, here's an how-to for constructing a rope bed.
First, the drawings:
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| Head End and Foot End |
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| Sides |
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| Bedposts |
A click on the images will enlarge them, the scale is 1:10 (1cm on the drawing corresponds to 10cm in reality).
As you can see, the sides are getting two pins per side for plugging them into the posts, head end and foot end each only one per side. I thought the tension on the sides disperses better, if it is fixed in two spots. The pins each are 14cm long, 9cm for the post and 5cm in excess. The holes for the rope are 15cm apart from each other, between the first and last hole and the posts, there is a gap of 10cm. The diameter of the holes is directed to the diameter of the rope used, we used a 8mm hemp rope, so the diameter of the holes would be 10mm.
The drawing of the post is in a way that you are looking directly onto one of the edges of the post, so the middle line corresponds to an edge and the faces above and below it each correspond to adjacent edges of the post. Between two opposing faces, there is a hole through the post with the dimensions 14cm x 5cm with a gap of 2cm to the edges of the post, the head end and foot end are plugged into this hole. Between the other two opposing sides, there are two holes with the dimensions 6cm x 5cm, in these holes are plugged the sides of the bed, here is also a gap of 2cm to the edge of the post.
All in all, we used about 40m of hemp rope, a bit less than 20m between head end and foot end and a bit more than 20m between the sides. The rope is woven and not just swivelled, this way, it cannot come losse while threading it into the holes.
Once set up, it looks like this:
As you can roughly see, the ropes are interwoven. First, the rope between the sides has been threaded through the holes and put on tension, then, the rope between head end and foot end has been threaded through, once getting above, once getting below the already threaded ropes - interwoven. As hemp is a material that stretches in time, one has to put new tension on the ropes. In three nights, Froedhi and I remarked a slight hollow in our mattress.
Finally, we put a felt mat, some furs, pillows and blankets onto it and then cuddled ourselves up in our bed:
The posts on this image are slightly larger than in the drawing, we will shorten them a bit in the coming days.
The setting up takes about 20minutes to thread and tighten the ropes, the bed is disassembled in about the same amount of time, a bit faster perhaps, as you'll have to just remove the ropes. In fact, it is sufficient to remove the rope between head end and foot end, the rope between the sides of the bed can stay in place, this way, it is already cleaned up.
Good luck constructing your own rope bed!
