Pioneering projects

Ever wanted to play Minecraft in real life? Pioneering is exactly that: taking logs, cutting them to size, lashing everything together with rope, and watching a real gateway, table, or tower rise in the middle of camp — without a single nail. In this guide, you'll discover the classic Pathfinder projects, what the official requirements say, and which build is the perfect place to start today.

🪵What is a pioneering project?

Picture Minecraft outside the screen: you gather logs, fit piece to piece, and — block by block — raise a real gateway at the entrance to camp. That's pioneering: the art of building camp structures and furniture using only wood or bamboo and rope.

Rule number one comes straight from the honor's official requirements: nails, screws, and wire must not be used. No hammers, no drills. Everything stays standing thanks to lashings — rope-wrapping techniques that lock two poles together as if they were one. If that word is still new to you, start with our guide to knots and lashings.

In the Pathfinders — the Adventist Church club for ages 10 to 15 — pioneering even has its own honor: Rustic Construction, code AR101. An honor is like a level in a video game: a list of challenges that, once you complete them, turns into a patch sewn onto the uniform.

Nails, screws, and wire must not be used.Official requirements of the Rustic Construction honor (AR101)

🧰What are the classic camp projects?

The basic honor's list reads like a furniture-store catalog — except everything is made of logs and rope. It includes tables (on one tripod, two tripods, or four bases), the shoe rack (the shelf where shoes stay before you step into the tent), the 2-meter tripod for hanging the lantern, the frame for a raised stove, and even a dish-washing sink with a water collector connected to a septic tank.

At the advanced level, the difficulty spikes: a giant gateway, a bridge, a full camp kitchen, a shelter raised 1 meter off the ground, and a tower 4 meters tall. It's the kind of build that makes everyone stop to take a photo.

The table below sums up the structures called for in the official requirements, with exact measurements:

Structures required by the official requirements of the Rustic Construction and Rustic Construction – Advanced honors (South American Division).

🚪How does the camporee gateway work?

The gateway (or portico) is the entrance to the club's campsite — and it works like a calling card. At a camporee, the giant campout that brings several clubs together at once, gateways turn into an unofficial creativity contest: some clubs build a ship, a castle, even a whole Noah's ark. Want to understand this event? See what a camporee is.

In the advanced honor, the official gateway must have at least 8 bases and 20 lashings. And there's a second, even tougher challenge: building a gateway without digging into the ground, held up purely by the structure's own balance. That's real engineering — done by teenagers.

Good to know: every camporee publishes its own rules spelling out what will be judged in the gateway (size, theme, safety, creativity). Before sketching the club's project, check the event bulletin and talk with the leadership.

🛠️What's a good project for beginners?

Nobody starts with the tower — just like nobody takes on the boss in the first level. The perfect entry-level project is the tripod: three poles joined by a single lashing that spread open and stand on their own. It shows up in the official requirements as the base for both the lantern tripod and the table on one tripod.

Building it has three steps: first, tie the tripod lashing on the three poles laid side by side; then, spread the legs and level them on the ground; finally, lash the short poles of the tabletop across the top, forming the tray. Practice the basic lashings beforehand — one loose lashing brings down the whole project.

Two tips instructors always repeat: cut notches (small grooves carved into the wood) at the points where poles cross — the advanced requirements highlight this technique because it locks the structure in place — and never use a cutting tool without an adult nearby.

📐Why sketch before lashing?

In the advanced honor, before touching a single log, the Pathfinder has to create scaled drawings of each structure and build scale models of four of them. It's just like a house blueprint: first on paper, then in real life.

That habit changes everything. With the drawing done, you can calculate how many poles to cut, how much rope to bring, and where each lashing goes — instead of finding out halfway through camporee that you're short on material. It's creative mode before survival mode.

The advanced level also includes a curious requirement: a Bible study on the moments when the people of Israel were called to build this kind of structure. In the club, pioneering is also a bridge between practical skill and faith.

🏅Where does pioneering show up in the classes?

The classes are the Pathfinders' yearly progression plan, one for each age from 10 to 15. In the Excursionist class, usually completed at age 14, the Camping Craft section requires finishing the Rustic Construction honor. The advanced class, Excursionist in the Woods, asks the Pathfinder to build a piece of camp furniture and a gateway for the club together with their unit (the small, fixed group within the club).

In other words: sooner or later, every Pathfinder faces a real pioneering build. The full requirements, lashing by lashing, are in our guide to the Rustic Construction honor — here, the focus is on the projects themselves.

🦺What should you never do on a pioneering project?

Pioneering is safe when the rules are taken seriously — and the official requirements demand exactly that: knowing the safety rules for the tools used (machete, saw, bush knife, and bow saw) and keeping them sharp. It sounds strange, but a dull tool is more dangerous: it slips instead of cutting.

Three rules apply in every club, no exceptions: never climb a structure that hasn't been tested by a leader; never use a cutting tool without adult supervision; never leave a lashing "a little loose," thinking you'll fix it later. Before the first cut, read the guide to tool safety.