Arwen's meanderings

Hi everyone and welcome to my dinghy cruising blog about my John Welsford designed 'navigator' named Arwen. Built over three years, Arwen was launched in August 2007. She is a standing lug yawl 14' 6" in length. This blog records our dinghy cruising voyages together around the coastal waters of SW England.
Arwen has an associated YouTube channel so visit www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy to find our most recent cruises and click subscribe.
On this blog you will find posts about dinghy cruising locations, accounts of our voyages, maintenance tips and 'How to's' ranging from rigging standing lug sails and building galley boxes to using 'anchor buddies' and creating 'pilotage notes'. I hope you find something that inspires you to get out on the water in your boat. Drop us a comment and happy sailing.
Steve and Arwen

Saturday 18 January 2014

Model tents

Take one set of plans; mark out on 4mm ply and join the dots.
Then take a 3mm drill and drill holes judiciously.
Take some springy electric cable ties and then add plastic sheeting......
Simmer for a while as you grapple with tucks and cuts and then leave
Come back after several cups of tea and survey...........



Well I made one tunnel tent and got an idea of what it looks like in terms of cloth and cuts. I then tried the square tent using the BBQ sticks.



Now I just have to trim to shape and measure out and scale back up again to the real thing.
It was a fun couple of hours leaving me plenty to think about




Steve

4 comments:

Lorenzo said...

Great work Steve, it inspires me doing something similar. How do you plan to sew the cloth to make the tent when you'll get to it? I thought that in order for the seams to be watertight the sewing requires special inlaid tapes and other complicacies...
Lorenzo

steve said...

Hi Lorenzo
Only just thinking about that but I think I will use the approach in my Rohan mountain jacket. You can tape over the seams with a special sticky backed tape and sealant - so you stitch things together and then over the join put the tape. Also there is a really good sealant I have used before on my tents that comes in a tube which you squeeze and put on the outside of the stitching - its name escapes me but it is like a stretchable, flexible sealant. having priced things up - the fabric is quite expensive; aluminium tubing and connectors nowhere near as much as I was expecting. Anyway now I am looking and costing up all options - cheap tents and butcher them; build my own. I'll let you know how I get on

Steve

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

That tube one is neat... tent poles and some rip stop?? Not sure how waterproof rip stop is, come to that...! :o)

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve, the seam tape you refer to is actually iron on, and is very easy to do. It makes a good watertight professional looking seam, Phil.