Boyscout Cross-over Bridge

My son crossed over from cub scouts to boy scouts a week ago. At the previous yearly cross over ceremonies the “bridge” used was basically a pallet with hand rails. It was very uninspiring. I volunteered, well over a year ago to build something a little more symbolic. Of course I waited until the last couple weeks to get it done. In fact, I ran out of time before I left town and the Den leader put the stain on. The hand “rails” were added when the possibility of the parents walking across came up.

The goal of this project was not to build fine furniture nor fine tune hand tool techniques. It was to build something fast, rough and cheap for 10 year old boys to walk across once a year. Otherwise, it will be stored in a storage trailer.

Design: In the spirit of the scouts I wanted the bridge to be a little adventurous. Thus, I designed a suspension bridge. The suspended aspect consists of 12 treads that represent the 12 points of the scout law. I wanted to learn how to rout the words into the treads but ran out of time.

The tension on the set of steps is offset by the 2×6 spans which are in compression. I used really long eye bolts so that they can be threaded easily without tension. The entire construct can be assembled/disassemble by one person.

Materials: 2×12s, 2×6s, 2×4s from scrap and from Lowe’s. The treads are 5/4×6” from Lowe’s.

Galoot Index: 2.5
Dimensioning = 0
Sub-assemblies = 0.5
Joinery= the only real joinery was in the legs which were sawed by hand
Final surfacing= 0.5 I used hand planes to trim. Smoothing was for the really rough areas limited to a jack plane.
Accents= 1.5 The steps were chamfered with a #5. The long 2×6 was chamfered with a spokeshave.

Thanks for looking

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Getting started on the riser.

Sawing the legs so they are attached at an angle. Visually I think the angled legs are more stable. It would have much easier to attach them square. Also they looked too skinny so a glued a panel of scrap pine to the front of the leg. This covered the 2×4 laminations and increaed thickness.

This pic shows the heart of the project. The riser has a dado the the front face rabbet fits into. The leg is angled and half-lapped. A corner block for rigidity. THe eye bolt to tension the bridge and the 2×6 stretchers to keep the steps apart.

A joist hanger for the 2×6 stretchers

This show the basic skeleton and shows one tread to see how it will go together.

The treads were 5/4 pine and cut to length. I drilled a hole so that I could access the nuts of the cable clamps.

The edges were chamfered for safety.

Bracket was made to attach the cable clamps to the bottom of the tread. Unfortunately, the clamps raised the tread about 1/2” above the cable so I glued spacers for stabilty.

The final assembly and my supervisor

The steps were chamfered for safety using a block plane or jack plane. The stretchers looks “bulky” as plain 2×6’s so I took a little off the bottom with bandsaw then further chamfered to bottom and top with a Stanley 151 spokeshave.

The Big night…......

Thanks for looking!

-- I hate being bipolar. It's awesome! :^ ) ^:

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