Bags O’ Tinder, a/k/a Building A Tent

No sooner did I get home from teaching the Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing class and got the truck unloaded, I dove straight into prepping for last week’s 18th Century Trades Fair down at my friend Tim Duff’s place in Mill Gap VA.  I was looking forward to the event, the third annual Labor Day Weekend shindig, as I missed it last year to attend and participate as a longstanding supporter of Handworks in Amana IA.

One of the aspects of preparing for the Trades Fair was making myself a period-appropriate-ish tent in which I would occupy for my demonstrations.  I’d purchased a nice canvas drop cloth several months ago to use as the covering and had “conditioned” it by leaving it spread outside through several rains (tells you how long ago this was; we had no decent rain from April through early August).  Supposedly this tightens up the canvas weave.

As for the tent structure I decided to make everything from 2×4 construction lumber I had on-hand, it was a bit lightweight but it was handy.

I made the long main beam from a pair of full-sized boards, hand planed and scarfed together with a 24″ long “bird mouth” to achieve the 12-foot length I needed.  These were supported by hand planed full-sized 2x4s mortised into the beam.

I spruced up the posts with recurved corbels and cut a curve on the end of the beam, then chamfered everything by hand.

To make the posts and beam into a tent I fashioned ten tent poles, again using 2x4s but cut into octagons on the bandsaw, then spokeshaved and once again hand planed.  I actually found one of my Japanese planes to be the best tool for this task.

Once the surfaces were all planed I added pins (screws) to the tops of each pole.  The pins were inserted into holes in the leather grommets I glued at the appropriate places in the canvas.

The guy ropes held everything upright and I planed a bunch of leftover Gragg chair pieces to be used as the cord stakes on-site.

Fortunately, I had the space on the fourth floor of the barn to set it up ahead of time.  As it turned out I did not need the tent at the event, Tim had erected a large tent and asked me to demonstrate there along with a hand-finished deerskin artist and a local historical fort presenter.  But, as Mrs. Barn says, I’ve got a first-class shelter for the next time I need one.

Plus, as the title alludes, two trash bags of shavings to use as tinder this winter.  Since she is the one to revive the fire from the overnight coals every morning (a handful of shavings gets it going right away) the pleasure from the project will continue for many months.