Designing a new tent

I’ve been asked to make a new tent – the biggest one yet.  I have the size and shape sorted out, now I just need to work out the colour scheme/decoration.

The tent will be based on the Fogliani fresco;

Here’s what we have planned;

It’s 10m x 15m and 5.5m tall.  It’s a lot of tent.

Most of my tents are made with a “natural” finish, so they’re cream coloured and I’ve painted mine. In our early discussions I had intended to use alternating red and white canvas but after a discussion on the Medieval Tentmakers Facebook page I’m concerned that the red will fade.

Now I’m thinking that we could paint stripes on the tent, and could perhaps add the Household badge, similar to this tent;

I’ve also collected a bunch of similar decorated tents, for comparison and more ideas.

Sunshades

Like so many things in the SCA, we seem to have made something that works, that people like and that we can’t quite document as an item used in period.

These are the sunshades used by the Barony of Stormhold for our monthly tournaments.  They’re easy to put up, dry, store and transport.  They were pretty easy to make and have lasted for nearly nine years so far.  We even made a pair for our neighboring barony, Krae Glas.

I think the original inspiration came from this article by Charles Oakley.  Unfortunately, our first efforts didn’t include the front part, which seem to be pretty universal in the manuscript pictures showing tournaments.  The collection of links for merchant stalls and fairs include some more promising documentation however.

 

Here’s our design
As the canvas we buy is typically 2m wide, it’s easy to make stripes approximately half a canvas width.  Each piece is flat fell seamed together and then the whole piece is hemmed.  The leather hole reinforcement is the same as we use on all of our tents.

To put up the sunshade you also need 4 poles, each 2.1m high, 12 tent pegs and  8 ropes.  You won’t always need 2 ropes on each pole, but it’s helpful on blustery, windy days.

Other uses
These sunshades/rectangles of canvas can also be used as an enclosed tent, or a larger, wall-less sunshade, or as a tent like one of these;

The Capitulation of Colle di Val d’Elsa by Pietro di Francesco Orioli c.1479

 

 

Looking good!

Here’s a picture of a tent that is often used to justify the hub and spoke method of construction;

And take a look at the photo I took of the nice sized bell last weekend;

Look!  No framing, just a centre pole, good shaping of the roof pieces and a bunch of ropes!

I think there’s another manuscript picture that matches my photo even better – remind me in the comments?

The nice sized bell becomes a double bell

Lay the tent out

Put the poles together and put them into the tent with the base of the poles at the centreline of the final tent location

Tie the storm guys to the tent spike. Here’s the knot we use to hold the storm guys to the top of the tent poles

Make a loop

And another loop in the other direction

Put one loop on top of the other

put them over the tent pole spike and pull them tight

Storm guys hold up the poles. This is the bit you might need help with, but the rest can be done with one person

Another view of the storm guys. The pegs are located 3.5m from the base of the pole (parallel to the pole) and 3m from the pole (perpendicular to the pole) See the drawing.

The rolling hitch is used for the guys – it slides

The guys are held onto the tent with a simple knot. If the ropes get wet it is best to remove them to dry so you don’t grow mould on the canvas.

Next do the eave ropes at the edges of the doors to create a rectangle. The guy pegs will be about 2.8m from the base of the erected poles.

Then the quadrant point guys to establish the shape of the circle

and fill in the two guys between the door guy and the quadrant point

Enjoying how round the end of the tent is

See how round!

The wind has billowed the wall into shape

Just like the roof eaves, start pegging the walls at the quadrant point

And then fill in the circle. we have combined the two guys in front of the door to one peg.

What a sexy tent!

You can fit a double bed between the pole and the wall.

Close up of the rolled up door.

There’s a door on the other side too, but we left it closed.

The eave ropes are only 500mm past the base of the wall

the packing list – tent poles in pieces, They fit in a small hatch! fit

The 50 pegs (not all used), two mushrooms and pole spikes go in the small bag

The folded tent and the two storm guys

Three packages in total

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

Folding the tent

The tent is folded

Ropes

In almost all of the tent pictures where you can see the guy ropes, the guys have what we call crow’s feet.  Crow’s feet are the three (less often two) ropes coming off the eave of the tent that are knotted (it seems) into just one rope that is pegged to the ground.  Like this:

We’ve always struggled with the crow’s feet.  They’re difficult to adjust, we’re not sure of how to do the knot and mostly we’ve just put them in the too hard basket and gotten quite a good shape to our eaves anyway;

single bell

Small double bell

Innilgard pavilion

A few days ago, I discovered this picture.  It’s out of period, but it’s suggesting an alternative construction technique for the guys:

Maybe the guys go up to the centre pole and are sewn to the roof canvas, maybe the crow’s feet are then tied on to the main guy to hold out the eave?

What do you think?

Tent canvas width

Just doing some quick searching online for what width of fabric would be likely for tent canvas.  Here’s what I’ve got so far;

Google book result about the Greenland dress.  Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4,  edited by Robin Netherton, Gale R. Owen-Crocker p.168
Robin Netherton says that dress was made from fabric 40-41cm.

Silk Damask 68cm in width. Satin Damasks of Renaissance Europeby Krystal Morgan
Medieval textiles Issue 37 September 2003,

this needs further investigation: On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics

There is an extant pattern book out there that has a couple of tent pattern layouts – I need to find it again!  In the meantime, CuriousFrau has taken a look at typical fabric widths in Juan de Alcega’s Tailor’s Pattern book of 1589.  She says that typical fabric widths in this book are “2/3 bara, 1 1/3 bara, 1 1/2 bara, 1 2/3 bara, 1 3/4 bara and 2 bara ” and 1 bara is 33″.  this translates to

	Canvas width – inches	Canvas width – mm
2/3 bara	22	550
1 1/3 bara	44	1100
1 1/2 bara	49.5	1237.5
1 2/3 bara	55	1375
1 3/4 bara	57.75	1443.75
2 bara	66	1650

.

A different way to cut out.

We’ve been making round tents for a while now.  When I look at the eave lines of the tents in manuscripts I can see that they’re very round.

I’ve always cut the wall pieces with an arc at the top and bottom and get a very round looking tent.

cutting detail from the family double bell showing the wall and roof pieces

single bell

Note the wavy shape at the eaves?  I think that’s because when we peg out the eave guys of these tents we don’t follow the line of the roof and put the pegs too far away from the base.  It’s counter intuitive, but something I’m going to keep an eye on.

You can see that the base is very round.

But many pictures don’t show a round base.

So I’m not going to cut the arc at the base of my next tent.It will give me more ventilation too.

I’d also like to use wooden pegs, as described in this great pattern/instructions for a Saxon Geteld.  They have a picture which is what inspired me this morning;

See the shape of the base?  Beautiful!

Aaargh!    I’ve written about this before

Tent class notes

These are the notes for my class on medieval pavilions held at Rowany Festival 2013.

Tour tents;

Start in dining pavilion – frequency of shapes, construction, pole size and timber choice, decoration, storm guys,

Barn tent – framing, guys, wind performance

Elayne’s tent – design principles (height of beds, space for storage, ease of erection, storage/transport space), frequency of shape

Rowan’s tent – framing, decoration, lining

Elspeth’s tent/Sara’s tent – design principles, internal volume vs space for storage, canvas choice, decoration

Types of tents, when, where and frequency.

• round/bell
• double bell
• rectangular
• wedge
• geteld

How to hold them up

• Poles
• cartwheels
• ridgepoles
• frames

Design principles

Construction

Decoration

Nice sized bell

Our most recent tent was designed as a round tent, in keeping with my philosophy on the distributions of tent types.  And, as usual, it needed to fit a double bed between the centre pole and the walls.  I looked at two options;

• a smaller version of the circus tent
• a tent based on the picture below, with a lower eave and less slope in the walls.

Here’s the pdf showing the two options, you can see the double bed between the centre pole and the wall;

Option 1 is slightly taller and has a slightly larger rope footprint than option 2.  They would both fit in a hatchback when packed up.  Here’s another manuscript showing a tent with similar proportions and steeply sloping walls, like option 2;

Detail from illuminated scrolls in Das Epos des Burgunder Reiches 16th century

And here is a picture of the tent we made:

We supplied the tent without the painting and the owners have painted it.  This photo was taken in September and it’s even more beautiful now that the painting is finished.

Pattern

The tent takes about 22m of 2m wide canvas. Here are the layout diagrams and a useful pdf of them all;

Roof

Walls

And here are the pattern pieces;
Roof

Walls

Accessories

Ropes

Using Pythagoras’ theorum,  the guys need to be

sqrt((base radius+distance from base of wall to rope)^2+tent height^2)-radius of roof cone +extra to tie the rope

=sqrt((2.1+0.7)^2+3.5^2)-2+2
=4.5m per guy

The storm guys are at 45degrees and they are based on the centre pole height:

sqrt(2 x 3.5^2) +extra to tie ropes (2m)
=5+2=7m each

Total length of rope for 12 guys and 4 storm guys is 12×4.5+7×4= 82m

 

 

Pennsic plans

I have to thank Asfridr for pretty much all of this info.

We’re off to Pennsic this year and I’ve heard horror stories of the waste at the end of the event when people throw away the cheap tent and sleeping bags they bought just for the event.  I don’t want to be one of those people.

Also, it would be sort of fun to find a way to be there in a period camping solution.

Maybe we could use a rectangle of canvas like this boy scout advice from 1911?

The picture on the right is redrawn from the Utrecht Psalter – from about 900.  There’s an original here.

And now I’ve had a play, I’ve worked out that a rectangle approximately 2.5m x 5m will give me a shelter with a floor plan of 2m x 2m.  And a piece of canvas 2m wide could be used for a shelter with a floor plan of 1.65m x 1.65m, which is probably too small for two adults at Pennsic.

Oh well, we were looking for a lightweight camping option for May Crown