Kon Tipi...Our Home in the Forest

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With the material purchased, we set to the task of assembling our tipi's skins. After cutting and numbering each length for the outer cover (following the pattern shown in Fig. 1), we glued the longest (68-foot) strip over the second (66-foot) length, using Bostik 7130 adhesive. It's very important to shingle each consecutive upper (long) section of fabric over the lower (shorter) piece that follows it, so that water will run over, and not into, the seams.

When it came to the actual gluing, we simply snapped a blue chalk line one inch from, and parallel to, one edge of each of the to-be-joined strips, then ran lines of glue along the chalked fabric. After brushing the adhesive out so that it covered the areas from the edges of the two sheets of material to the marked lines, we pressed the joints together, smoothed them with a roller, and wiped any excess glue away with clean rags. In all, it took us about 12 hours to assemble the outer wall.

Since we had quickly tired of the fumes produced by the glue (and because needle holes, which might have admitted moisture through the outer wall, weren't a concern in the inner covering), we decided to sew the liner together. The task required another 12 hours of work, using a double needle that produced two parallel seams about 1/4 inch apart. The only real problem we encountered was the tendency of the fabric to pucker . . . which made it necessary to hold the material securely, both in front of and behind the needle, as we stitched.

STEP TWO: A VAULT OF POLES
After the vinyl was assembled, folded, and stored, I pretty much turned Kon Tipi over to Michael . . . since I had to finish off two more months of city work before sailing into country life full time. Mike established a camp on our 20 rural acres and got right to the task of selecting and cutting poles. He chose, blessed, chopped, dragged, and peeled some 16 oaks, each about 35 feet in length and 4" to 6" at the base (after peeling). Once the poles were prepared, their lower ends were treated with wood preservative.

It was short work, then, to clear and level the 30-foot, circular homesite, after which Michael approached the intimidating task of actually raising the monstrous tripod that would form the core of the pole assembly. The job involved tying three trees together, at a point 30 feet from their bases, with one end of a strong 40-foot rope. Then he spread the butts of the poles apart . . . placing two together at one point on the perimeter of the prepared site, and the other (single) pole—also on the edge of the circle—roughly 25 feet away. (See Fig. 2 for a sketch of the pole-lifting procedure.)

With that done, Michael braced the bases of the logs in place with stakes . . . temporarily propped up the joint (where the three poles met) with a 10-foot length of 2 X 4. . . tied the free end of the rope to our truck . . . and pulled the framework high enough to allow him to grasp the base of one of the paired poles and swing it around the perimeter until the tripod stood on its own. He went on to place each log butt in its final spot by dropping a plumb line from the point at which they crossed to mark dead center of the 30-foot circle, and positioning each post exactly 15 feet from the center and equidistant from the two others. It was then a relatively simple matter to add the rest of the uprights and—climbing a ladder to do so—tie their tips to the tripod's joint.

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