Test your slats before you assemble the hana. Have your coworker grab one end, you take the other, and twist. You should be able to twist the slat 90 degrees without a problem.
Last Update: Monday, 07-May-2001 15:49:32 PDT
I've tossed this page together to satisfy the clamoring hordes. Nicer formatting to come later.
Kean
See the yurtquest FAQ.
It's still under construction. It'll look something like this when we're done. sixteen feet in diameter. Walls are five feet high. The smoke ring is three feet wide. The smoke ring is roughly nine and a quarter feet off the ground.
Chuck and Laurel Cox wrote "The Portable Yurt", Frog Pond Press, 1974. Then, some friends of mine, in search of more useful camping shelters, worked over the plans in "The Portable Yurt" and came up with these plans. My latent engineering genes overwhelmed me one night and I put together an excel spreadsheet that lets you tinker with the dimensions to your heart's delight.
Go buy 21 good knot-free (haha!) 8 foot fir 2x4's. Find a table saw. Cut 11 of the 2x4's to 68 inches long. Rip the 68 inch pieces (lengthwise) into 1/4 inch wide slats. You should have 98 of them. You need: 86 68" long slats, 4 57" slats, 4 35" slats, 4 13" slats. Cut the shorter ones from the 12 remaining 68" slats. Rip 9 of the 2x4's lengthwise into 1" wide rafters. You have one spare 2x4 to cover breakage in the rafters and slats as you build your ger.
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Test your slats before you assemble the hana. Have your coworker grab one end, you take the other, and twist. You should be able to twist the slat 90 degrees without a problem. |
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In this picture you can see where the smaller pieces go on the ends of the hana. Lay 43 of the 68 inch slats on the ground. On the left, ends aligned with the bottom of the 68 inch slats, place a 57 inch slat, then a 35 inch slat, then a 13 inch slat. On the right, ends aligned with the top of the 68 inch slats, place a 57 inch slat, then a 35 inch slat, then a 13 inch slat. This is the bottom layer. The top layer is more fun, and I will write more later. I gotta go retrieve my sick daughter from daycare. |
The smoke ring. Two ways to make it. The first is Monica Cello's ring. Look halfway down the page. Note that the directions on my page assume a 36" smoke ring. The second way is to laminate 1/8" birch plywood into a ring 4" tall and 36" in diameter. It's more work than Monica's ring, but looks very nice. See Robert and Crystal's ger page for details.
The door frame. Go get some poplar, 4 pieces 3/4"x4"x57" long, 2 pieces 3/4"x2"x39". Any hardwood will do. Maybe even fir or pine, if you can get good quality lumber. however, if the frame breaks, your ger will collapse. On you. Oops. The 57" pieces form the uprights on the door frame, two on each side. Sandwich the 39" pieces between the uprights, one at the top, one at the bottom. Decide if you want a single or double door panel. We did a double, so guess what the instructions are for 8-) Get four hinges, or two 56"x1.5" strips of 4-6 oz (heavy) leather. Go buy a 4'x8' sheet of 3/8" or 1/2" plywood. Cut out two 56"x17" panels. The panels should overlap the top and bottom pieces by about a half-inch. It's a crude weatherseal. Screw two hinges on each panel 5-8 inches from each end. Screw the hinges to the uprights on the frame. Decide on a locking mechanism for your door. We're going to do a drop-bar deadbolt for the inside but haven't finagled the details yet.
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Spend your money on good wood. It doesn't take much of a knot to break a slat or weaken a rafter. In the Pacific Northwest, Home Depot is the place to buy wood. They purchase select grade lumber; very nice stuff and not that much more expensive.
Likewise, check the rafters before you go use the ger for real. Brace one end of the rafter on the
ground, put one hand in the middle of the rafter and grab the other end. Push down on the rafter.
You should (depending on the wood you used) get 6-12 inches deflection without a lot of creaks or breakage.
Remember, you want things to break now, not at 1 AM in a driving rainstorm 400 miles from home. Been there.
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David setting a rivet. Note the two hacksaw blades used as spacers between the slats. |
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The assembled hanas, one expanded out to the full 16 foot circle, the other laying flat on the ground. |
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The flat hana in the previous picture, rolled up. The roll is about a foot across. |
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The two hanas rolled up on end in my garage. The shield gives scale. |
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Rafters in the sunlight. Not sure why I took this picture. |
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The rafters lying in the driveway after being sealed. This was the one sunny day in a three week span. |
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The rafters leaning up in the garage. Poor photo. |
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Ripping the 2x4's into slats. Note the eye and hearing protection and the absense of my braid. Actively secure your hair inside your shirt. You don't want your nice long hair being sucked into the saw blade or wrapped around the saw drive assembly. There are less painful ways to be scalped. |
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A more stylized shot of ripping the 2x4. |
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An overexposed photo of the fine dust that covered every horizontal surface in the garage when we were done. |
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Most of the sawdust waste. |
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The back view of the first sawdust photo. |
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The sawdust filled two garbage bags, and the bags filled a 35 gallon yard debris garbage can. |
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Turning the slats over so the second side can be sealed. |
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Closer shot of the slats in the driveway. |
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This was supposed to be a closeup of the slats, showing the rivet holes. I'm not quitting my day job to be a photographer. |
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A closeup of the tablesaw, showing my hearing protectors, polycarbonate eye protection, saw guide (behind the saw blade - this table saw was made before my dad was born and doesn't have a fence), overexposed pusher stick and end grains of two typical 2x4's. The growth rings in the 2x4 on the left are horizontal, and slow the saw down considerably. The 2x4 on the right has vertical growth rings and cuts quickly. I'm not sure which is stronger, though I'm thinking that slats ripped from the 2x4 on the right are the weaker ones. Having the blade on the table saw raised this high is dangerous. It exposes lots of the blade above the 2x4 and would have me for lunch if I slipped. We had problems ripping the 2x4's with the 7 and a quarter inch blade the saw was made for, and switched to the much larger 10 inch blade. One of the great things about being nominally an adult is the freedom to do stupid things, as long as you're prepared to take responsibility for the results if you screw up. |
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A closeup of some of the tools. Hacksaw blades, rivets (#9, 3/4" long), a rivet set we didn't use, a square, and the test rivet joint. |
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More tools and one end of the hana. Note the hacksaw blades again, ball peen hammer, vise grips (for removing the blades when they got stubborn) and the rivets. |
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The sprayer used to apply the Thompson's Water Seal. |