How a misdirected hammer blow led to a revolutionary tent peg

The moment Connie Kruger hit the tent peg a little off-centre, and had to wait for the pain of the vibration to take its course through his hand and up his arm, he threw the peg into the bush out of pure frustration, and the search for what would become Max-Pegs™ started.

Connie was pitching his tent at Pilanesberg when he tried to pitch the V-peg mostly used by campers. His experience generated an intense frustration with Connie, and he spent the rest of the day on his camp chair, evaluating what his knowledge of physics and mechanics told him about how tent pegs should actually work.

***_{The V or 7 tent peg which failed and led to the invention of the Max-Pegs}***

By late afternoon, it dawned on Connie that the requirements for an effective anchor peg would be that it should be directly opposite each other if it was to keep a tent pole in balance.

The peg should also be flexible to compensate for wind pull. But Connie figured out that the flexibility could not come from the spring steel of the peg itself. It had to have another way in which it could compensate for movement but allow the anchor rope to remain tight

It also had to remain functional even if the peg became loose in the ground due to wind pushing and pulling.

The result of Connie’s efforts is now known as the Max-Pegs™.

When I visited Maxcons in Centurion, Connie explained to me the differences between the real Max-Pegs™ and the copies one find in camping shops. Apart from the differences you can see in the videos below, just take a look at the tip of the peg and compare that to the copy pegs. What Connie figured out, is that the way in which the tip is cut in the factory, dictates how straight the peg goes into the ground. A peg with a tip that is cut on one side, will tend to go in skew into the ground because it follows the direction it is forced to. Max-Pegs™ go in straight without following a side cut on the peg end because there are no one-sided cut. It is cut from both sides and in a specific way.

Connie likes to tell the story of his daughter who went camping at Rocky Bay. She and her husband pitched camp on stand 38, the stand which campers stay away from because of the height of the site which exposes it to strong winds (although it has a magnificent view). A few friendly campers warned them that their tent may not survive a nightly wind.

The next morning, Connie’s daughter and her husband woke after a sound sleep to a sight of flapping tents. They slept right through the night without realizing that there was a storm wind blowing. To be fair, the fact that they were using a Max-Tent may have contributed to their sound sleep.

Read about our camp at Rocky Bay