Self installing tent-pegs could save campers lots of time. It is basically a telescopic pole which shrinks to 1 inch long with a small disk on top. When you stamp on the disk the telescopic peg is pushed into the ground and a small cylinder of compressed air "unfolds" the peg and fires it into the ground. To re-use the peg just pump up the small cylinder by pumping the peg up and down.-- Fireraven, Aug 27 2001 I don't know about every time, [UB]...I've found numerous ways to go wrong with a pointed spike and a hammer - most of them also involve hard ground & stones and result in a bent spike.-- -alx, Aug 27 2001 You're evidently used to a far more hardcore version of camping than I am...-- -alx, Aug 27 2001 Builders use devices which shoot nails into wood (and into concrete) using an explosive charge. You could use a similar device for driving tent pegs. Handy if you're camping on a huge unbroken expanse of granite, say. Or in a parking garage.
Disadvantage is that you'd eventually run out of explosive charges and have to go back to civilization to get more.-- wiml, Aug 27 2001 I dunno if you'd penetrate rock, though. If you didn't, then one of two things would happen: the telescoping bit of the peg would bend and get ruint, or the disk would bang up into your foot. And if you did penetrate the rock, how in the devil would you get the beast back out?
I use aluminum stakes about 25 cm long because I go backpacking and I don't wanna lug those steel spikes of UnaBubba's up trails that grow steeper each year. If the ground's too rocky to drive 'em I just put a stick through the tie-down and pile boulders on it. Snow camping is great, you stomp the stick and tie-down into the snow and by nightfall it's frozen in and you couldn't pull it out with a truck. (To get it back out you have to excavate it completely.) I just love camping.-- Dog Ed, Aug 28 2001 I'm guessing that they'd penetrate rock, or could be designed to --- they penetrate concrete, after all.
You wouldn't take them out. You'd just detach your tent and leave them there. Evantually, all exposed rocky surfaces on the planet would have some handy tent pegs sticking out of them, for the convenience of future campers.-- wiml, Aug 28 2001 For comfort's sake it's probably best not to camp on ground that you can't bang a regular peg into. In my experience, pegs into sand is the trickiest one.-- stupop, Aug 28 2001 The pegs aren't designed to penetrate rock, just to go into normal soil. If they hit rock they shoot out of the ground you pump them up and try again in a different place.-- Fireraven, Aug 29 2001 If you're only putting the pegs in normal soil you don't even need a hammer - I just push mine in with my foot on the (rare) occasions when I find soil under the peg.
Perhaps a drilling action would be more useful for penetrating rock?-- gravelpit, Aug 29 2001 Screwing in pegs is a lot moe time consuming than just stamping on a peg but if there are lots of stones it could be useful.-- Fireraven, Aug 30 2001 Why don't all you saddos just book into a hotel?-- pussygalore, Aug 30 2001 I tried to do this but most hotels thoroughly object to me drilling my pegs into their floors-- po, Aug 30 2001 Would it not take more effort to pump the peg up than it would to hammer a normal peg into the ground?-- English_gent, Jul 29 2003 random, halfbakery