Mike - you can't teach innovation per se but you can help kids to open up their minds...they see a 3 minute demo from me and are astounded how I have sketched 12 completely different ideas in the time it takes them to *think* up one. Think with the pencil not the mind....
Hello, everyone. I'm the inventor of the nomallet pegs. Craig emailed me to ask me to join the thread and try to answer your queries. As some previous postings have pointed out - I'm still at prototype stage and haven't got a manufacturer yet or chosen a material to produce them in. The main line of pegs will be in some sort of strong steel and I also hope to produce titanium models that will be light and robust. From my site you will be able to see that I came up with the idea at a music festival. So, yes, it was originally designed for the mass market of campsite users - but after lots of interested feedback from serious users like yourselves I am now doing all I can to make them fit your uses as well. The fact that you just stand on them to put them into the ground doesn't just do away with the need for a mallet (which many of you don't use anyway) they should speed up the process of erecting a tent. A few people have pointed out that the prongs that you attach the rope to will be liable to saw through a guy rope in high wind. I am trying to address this issue by rounding off the sharp edges in the manufacturing process. There are so many types of ground that people camp on - I don't reckon this peg is suitable for all of them. I have yet to try it in snow, ice and sand. I know they won't dig into rock - but someone pointed out a couple of days ago that my nomallet pegs may work as grappling hooks and will be better for burying under a pile of rocks than conventional pegs! Not what I had intended them for - but maybe they have a point. As for bulkiness - the pegs stack together for economy of space. They also lock together into a unit that you can leave to swing from your backpack or wrap up in your tent. I hope I've answered most questions. But please feel free to email me or post more comments here. I appreciate all your interest, suggestions and critisism. Dave
Dave, to sort of come at things from the other direction, I have to say that I've never found that placing tent pegs is a significant factor in time taken to put up a tent, any tent. For me to buy a new tent peg it would have to be light, very strong and hold significantly better than existing peg designs in a variety of ground conditions.
Generally mallets are irrelevant to walkers / mountaineers / backpackers since you can either stand on the top of a good peg or simply use that handy mallet substitute, a rock...
I know that sounds a bit negative, but while it's a very neat idea, it doesn't actually seem to do anything better than existing pegs, other than not require a mallet of course. Oh, generally if I'm pitching on morraine-type terrain, I simply tie the guyline around a large rock rather than use a peg.
For more general use though, it does sound like a great idea.
If Ti ones sell for a quid each I'll take a two thousand and sell them back to Lockheed Martin
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I think it's woth pointing out that Millet's turnover is larger than all the other outdoor gear shop's put together. What means that is that the mass market is far, far larger than the specialist market (that F&T, Cots, indys etc cater for) that the people on this site make up part of. One hundred thousand people went to Glastonbury this weekend - and they all camped.
For people like that,(and me, cos I'm a lazy bastard), Nomallet pegs will much easier to use than current pegs. Their feature/benefits would be so great they'd be very easy to sell in shops. So in all I really don't think that any of the reservatuions people may have here are of much consequence. I also don't think a Ti version is worth investigating at this stage in time.
Joan - Nomallet pegs would be rigid in one of the two dimensions current pegs can fail in, greatly increasing there overall rigidity. Frankly I don't reckon there will be any problems with them bending on rocks, and the instructions on the site do say 'if you feel any rocks take the peg out and resite'.
Eh? No, Dan, they wouldn't be rigid unless they were made of a tougher metal than current tent pegs, and they have a greater surface area to be deformed, too. I imagine they would have to be as thick and heavy as shelf brackets to survive repeated use.
You try bending an I-beam. Or a piece of mdf in the plane of the face.
I imagine (Mind experiments, eh? Einstein would be proud) that they would have immense holding power, much more than a normal peg (obviously) (he says going on to explain why) as they have a much larger surfce area acting against the pull force of the guy, and they always insert at the angle which gives maximum anchorage, where as many people don't put normal pegs in at the right angle.
If we're splitting hairs, although Millets sell more than anyone else, they also deal with an end of the marlet where technical innovation isn't at a premium in the way it is at the technical end of the market. I wonder if individuals in that section of the market will be prepared to invest in pegs above the price of their original tent. Dave might be better off trying to sell the idea to a major tent manufacturer than going it alone via the web site, though I guess that's stating the obvious.
On the convenience side of things, a set of these pegs teamed with one of those 'umbrella tents' which simply unfold, should be a total no-brainer. Ideal for me in fact.
Fair point Jon but I reckon they probably would. I worked in Millets too at one point and if you can clearly demonstrate why somehting is worth it, punters often buy it. Especially festival go-ers, who are usually in a hurry, using their credit card and are prepared to buy anything to make their lives easier!
Another point is the number of gold and platinum cards we'd see. Yes, even rich people go camping with the family! While I have sometimes seen people like that buy a MHW tent for a lowland campsite while at Cotswolds just like anyone they like a bargain and many Millets customers are well off. People like that tend to be rich because they're clever and can quickly see the advantges of a product. Better still, they can easily afford it!
You don't have to be poor to go camping (but it helps?)
Do these pegs bend, twsit, skew or go out of shape like the usual tent pegs? (I don't mean titinium liteweight stuff but the bogstandard issue supplied with new tents)
Oh BTW why doesn't the inventor get an innovation grant to visit China. Most tents seem to be sourced from China these days. As in millions of square feet of produced output. It would seem to make sense to visit the manufacturing source rather than trapse around outlets that use a re-badging process. (see me for details?)
I think that these would be very successful if aimed at the "family camping" arena. By that I mean people that camp (almost) exclusively on lowland sites, which are generally speaking much less rocky than the places most of us on this site would frequent.
Why is everyone being so negative about this fantastic design? At last someone has thought about the physics of tent peg design, these look fantastic. If they work as well as their design suggests they should (i.e all moments of inertia in the correct planes) then great, give them a try before trying to slag 'em off as to why they won't work for you or are unsuitable for the type of terrain that you normally camp on, come on they can't be any less suiltable than the part wire coat hangers that we use now on rocky/mountain terrain, (anyone with a modicum of logic can see how much easier it must be to anchor a plate rather than a rod with rocks<). Also how many would run out to buy them if they carried a North Face or Mountain Hardware design logo. Perhaps if they were 600powerfill down or made from Gore-tex the designer could find a manufacturer tomorrow due to demand. SUCK IT AND SEE THEN MAKE YOUR DECISION. For me the design looks good, radical enough to work properly (and not just for weekend/ part, don't know what they're doing festival campers!(your thoughts not mine)).
Frightened by tent pegs? Well, I suppose if stephen hook got hold of some...quick nurse - the tranquilsers!
I guess (not having used them who can say?) that they would be great on soft ground, as the chances of them pulling through are low - as they present so large a surface area the pressure of the tent guy is spread evenly across the whole of the underground part of the peg.
Similarly on snow larger versions should work well, although they may be tricky to remove once thouroughly frozen into place. However on rocky ground it looks like there may be problems. When inserting trad wire type pegs if you hit a rock, you generally push a bit to see if you can slide round the edge of it, and if not remove it and try again at the side. It's pretty unlikely that it would be possible to move the rock underground - it's well cemented in place with earth/mud.
So with one of these pegs, which - when seen from below - has a straight line of metal a couple of cms long, it looks like if there's a rock in the way there would be little hope of getting it in. Also, when camping on rough ground with coarse grass, reeds or heather, it would be hard to see how you could get the flat plate on top of the new pegs to sit flush to the ground - the vegetation would tend to spring the peg upwards and so loosen it.
I've always thought it's "horses for courses" with pegs, which is why my peg bag contains a few standard wires, some small section macpac T pegs, three of those fancy 7075T9 pegs from america that are like sharpened sections of tent pole (and which ARE NOT unbendable btw, I managed in Corsica last year!), and a couple of whopping Black Diamond stakes, heavy but very secure - like small snow stakes. Between them I can always get enough secure pegs in on whatever ground I'm camping on, from NZ moraine to Scottish mountain.
Let's face it you don't go climbing with a rack consisting entirely of number 8 rocks and nothing else, versatility is the key, and I don't see how securing a £300 tent is that different. So a couple of these would be good additions to the bag, but I doubt they will revolutionise my camping anyway. That said, if your camping is confined to close cropped grass and baked earth I can see that these would be ideal.
So Rob I take your point but maintain that in rocks/pebbles a rod always goes in better, as you have a chance of missing them, whereas a plate is far more likely to hit one, as the cross section is mucl larger - and more importantly - longer. Perhaps my modicum of logic isn't as good as yours :-) but I reckon if I had to put a peg into a tray of freshly laid eggs, I'd go for a rod rather than a long plate - it would be less messy...
Probably not the best analogy admittedly - but the best could come up with on the spur of the moment. Cue 15 year old Fry&Laurie sketch about making omelettes without breaking eggs...
Given that I run my screen at 1400x1050 even I have difficulty reading some of my posts. Doh.
