Here's a Juneteenth update to my experimentation with the shelter tent! I'd seen online, and in Hardtack and Coffee, and alternate set up for the Shelter Half, which not only increases the size of the resulting tent but lets in more cool air on a hot summers day.
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All it seemed to entail was the addition of four stakes at each corner of the tent, about a foot and a half high, which help open up the sides and of the tent and spread the canvas out at a shallower angle, giving you more space.
Easier said then done! Firstly, I didn't have much access to wood to make the new stakes... and when I finally did, it turned out to be very green. I tried to make the ends of the stakes pointy, as you do... which went fairly well, but I discovered that the branches I had to hand were small in diameter and that and the green wood made them really hard to drive into the ground with a mallet.In retrospect, all that was totally unnecessary: I think the tension of the canvas and the ropes would actually be more than enough to wedge the stakes against the ground if they have a flat bottom, like the way that the main stakes that support the ridgepole. Heck, by adding longer side ropes I think you could probably do this arrangement
without having the side stakes at all.
Speaking of canvas tension, I discovered at this point in construction that I had the shelter tent together wrong. So, in order to get the two canvas shelter halves together properly, one side is meant to go button side up, and the other button side down. When you button them together correctly, you get a lapped seam along the ridge that is buttoned on two sides. The result is a really tight connection between the two halves of the shelter tent, and the whole assemblage starts to make a whole lot more sense! The tension of the canvas stretched over whatever is holding your ridge pole is what holds your tent together, as it turns out.
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Anyhow, having properly assembled the tent, and adding the new side stakes and some more ropes to help support them, I finally had the whole shebang together! At this stage, I took some new pictures, with my gum blanket poncho for size reference. I spent about a week afterwards enjoying my new backyard shelter. This set up is really nice, it's like having a mini wall tent, and it lets in the cool summer breeze but not the sun. It's surprisingly good in the rain, too. But I wouldn't want to be in one in cold weather or high winds!
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Speaking of, with bad weather in the offing, I decided to do one last big photoshoot with the tent yesterday, whilst the weather held. Thus, I present: "The Hot Mess", a slice of life of a artilleryman and his tent.
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