Inner Tube Extravaganza

[DerekH]

Alrighty folks, the man with the plan, the guy who puts the weird into beard, the one we refer to lovingly as "boss", has a contest, so let's make it happen.

1. Beckerheads only.
2. Signup is limited to 20 positions.
3. You have until 06/28/15 to enter.

How this will work: The first 20 Beckerheads to send Ethan their information (Forum Name, Real Name, and Shipping Address) with the words "Inner Tube Challenge" as the subject will be sent an assortment of different sizes of inner tube. The contest is to use that inner tube in any bushcraft, survival, or knife oriented theme in the most creative manner possible. The winner will receive an even larger assortment of inner tube, and a knife, and probably some other SWAG. The losers will be ridiculed relentlessly until they retire from public life, or just acknowledged for their efforts, whatever works best (probably the second options because that requires less effort).

Here is an example of some inner tube brilliance that the boss has become quite fond of, also known as the MacIntyre sheath (spelling might be off there):

Ethan can be emailed at: beckerkt at gmail dot com

Post up in here if you are in and when you have sent your info so we can keep track. Entries will be required to be posted in here as well. If you use a knife for this, make it a BK&T knife. Also, as per usual, neither Ethan Becker, Myself, Ka-Bar, Bladeforums, nor any other entities are liable for anything that may happen due to participation in this contest as by participating you are acknowledging your own personal responsibility in your actions during said contest, be safe, use your head, sharp part away from you, so on and so forth, no purchase necessary, habeus corpus, etc...

No chatting, there will be a separate thread for discussion here: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1300267-Inner-Tube-Extravaganza-Discussion-Thread

The actual contest itself will run until Ethan comes up with an idea for when he will be back and not gallivanting around the nation causing chaos, food blisters, and the like.

Put your thinking hats on folks, and good luck!

UPDATE: Cutoff date for entries is the end of the month. You have until midnight (Eastern time) July 31 to submit your entries.

 

[Semper Praesidio]

I'm in. Email sent.

 

[granitestateofmind]

I'm down ta do dis. Email sent.

 

[dresnor]

This was a fun little brain teaser. I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to this challenge and most of my ideas required much longer tubes. One idea was a near full sized, tuneable bushcraft bass guitar. With that idea out the window, here is what I came up with

Need to hang up wet cloths in the bush? Make a bushcraft clothspin.

Hold bullets together in your hunting vest in groups the same count that your rifle holds. Banding them together tight keeps the sound to a minimum.

You can also silence keys and other things.

Keep excess pack straps out of the way.

Walking through brushy areas and want to keep your boots tied? Use a small ranger band around the knot to keep it tight and secure.

Don't burn your lips with a hot drink from a metal container. Put a band around the lips of the mug and drink easy.

Band batteries together so they don't loose their charge by being in contact with other things in your pack.

Or you can package them up like this by rolling the ends and holding the rolled ends in lace with another band.

Simple way to join sticks together, not great for heavy loads but handy.

Two ways to add retention for your fishing pole in a forked stick.

Simple finger splint, or an eye poke extension device.

On windy days make your pile of shavings in the center of a inner tube ring and ignite with a ferro rod, the shavings will catch the inner tube on fire and add to the length of burn time.

Add a section to your 550 cord bracelet to keep it handy.

Straighten kinked fishing line by pinching the inner tube around the line and pulling the line through.

Make a simple holder for your hand sanitizer.

Make goggles to help prevent snow blindness, or attending a long ranger convention, or... something else. You decide.

Thanks to Ethan, Kabar, Derek and to everyone who makes this place fun!

Be safe.

Jeremy

 

[Chameleonbear]

Email sent...

 

[Dexwithers]

Ok, e-mail sent, so guess I'm in. Yay!

 

[knifejunkie1928]

email has been sent!

 

[NCSlice]

In..email sent

 

[DunkEm]

I'll give it a run. Email sent.

 

[Jerry D.]

I'm in. I shot the boss an email.

Thanks.

 

[spikebot587]

I'm in email sent

 

[LG&M]

In, email sent.
This will be fun.

 

[Jonny1280]

I'm in!
Email sent!

 

[Diez Knives]

Im in email sent

 

[TheMadIndian]

I'm in

Email sent

 

[1066vik]

I'm in - email sent.

 

[zzyzzogeton]

I'm in - email sent.

 

[ocnLogan]

Email away. I'm in on this one .

EDIT:

In before the buzzer!

I wish I had more time to work on this, but my personal life has been very hectic (apt complex forced us to move out, so we couch surfed/visited family for 10 days while they renovated our apt). That, combined with work, and the fact that my wife is 8months 3 weeks pregnant with our first child (try moving twice, and then couch surfing with an 8.5 month pregnant wife sometime. Its lots of "fun") and all of the preparations that need to be finished have kept me from working on this as much as I'd like.

Also, like many others, many of my ideas were based on the idea of full tubes, not small ones. However, the time thing would have prevented most of those anyway. It happens.

Here are the two ideas I did manage to do.

Ever heard of the "how to walk through a piece of paper" trick? Its where you cut a standard piece of paper in a certain way, and it creates a giant hole in the middle (expands like a slinky more accurately) that makes it large enough to fit a person through easily. I wondered what would happen if I did that with one of the larger innertubes I was given. I was curious to see if I could make some "ranger band cordage".

Here is the pattern you have to cut. An easier way of doing this is to fold it in half (hotdog style) and cut alternating lines that don't quite go through the whole length. After you're done with these cuts, you just have to cut the little pieces that are connecting the "halfs" and you have a fairly good sized continuous cord.

Here it is in some bad lighting. But you can see how a piece of inner tube of about 4x6 inches (at most) turned into a single "loop" that easily fits a BK15 in its sheath inside of it.

Well, it turns out inner tubes make an interesting cordage. I used the reverse wrap method because of its simplicity, and while I didn't do so great at first with it, I think it turned out all right. I ended up with a single piece of cord that is maybe ~3/16in thick and perhaps 15-18in long? I didn't really stress it hard, but it held find under a 5-10lb test pull. Perhaps later I'll give it a good tug to see how strong it is. Either way, not a bad way to make some cord if all you have is a bike tire that won't hold air. I feel that it could easily be used to add some give to a

The other idea I had was similar to what others have done. I'm a pretty cheap as a rule, and so I generally stick with the stock handle scales and stock sheaths. One thing that is always somewhat annoying about them, is that the snaps sometimes stay kind of closed when you undo them. This is fine, but sometimes you end up almost cutting the straps when you re-sheath the knife. So I did a slightly different version of a "strap retractor". Its just a small strip of "ranger band" sewn to the back of the strap. I pulled it very slightly from its "rest" position while the straps were laying flat, and it works pretty well. Took about 5 minutes to do.

Anyway, I had more ideas, as well as some that didn't relate to outdoor stuff (use it as a chainstay guard for the mountain bike, etc). But, while I didn't have time to do them, I did enjoy seeing everyones creativity .

Thanks Ethan!

 

[Mrknot]

In as well.
Email sent.

 

[Ethan Becker]

OK then..... The thing that got me going on this was meeting Dave McIntyre at PWYP and his showing me a similar set up on his neck knife sheath....... The bike inner tube is a bottomless free resource at most bike shops..... Think Ranger bands three feet long ..... Scissors and imagination....Bingo...... Have fun and please come up with stuff to do with this pile Of black in edible donuts I have.......

Ethan

Dave has a bunch of cool and very practical YouTube vids..... Check them out.... E