Sherwin-Williams tarp in action.

Based upon advice from here and elsewhere, we have two from that company, one 8oz 10'x8' and one 12oz 12'x15'. Both 100% cotton, both shrunk on purpose by hot wash/dry cycles to make 'em denser.

And both, incidentally, stained with old pecan husks to take away the bleached look.

This past weekend in New Mexico gave us our first opportunity to field-test the 12'x15' at a campout (not a rendezvous or reenactment).

Here's the set-up the first evening, 15 foot edge draped crosswise over the frame, ridge pole 7 feet long....



It worked fine, but was longer than we needed.

For this first time out I had come up with a frame made of cheap ($1.67 ea.) 2x2's sawn in half to make 4ft lengths so as to get 'em into the Corolla. Matching 3/8" holes drilled along the length of each allow them to be lashed together to make varying lengths.

Here's the frame adjusted to shorten the ridgepole, note we used a string to stop the supporting "V" at each end from collapsing outwards, we were trying for a set up that reduced the need for guy lines and stakes as much as practical...



...and the tent set up again....



Four hours of steady rain overnight, sometimes heavy. Here's the tent the next morning, note the drooping canvas.



Inside, the canvas was soaked and wet to the touch everywhere during the rain, but no dripping occurred, perhaps because of the steep roof pitch. The ground was wet below the edges of the tent, but a substantial dry footprint remained, plenty big enough for my wife and I. Neither us nor the blankets or the dog got wet.



We want to come up with as free-standing a structure as possible, to that end a tripod rather than a "V" at each end might work well. We plan to switch to round cedar poles too (about the thickness they use for walking sticks), likewise cut into 4ft lengths and tied together as needed.

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher,
The 2 tarps I bought from Sherwin-Willams were used right out of the package. They have never been washed (except by rain) or dried (except by sun/wind). Neither has let through even a mist of moisture though used during torrential downpours.

Your observations, taken with mine, make me wonder whether the tarps are treated with something that is removed by washing in hot water (maybe the fabric sizing?) and drying.

I've read in several period journals that canvas was painted/soaked with a sizing of some sort (to fill the pores) before waterproofing.

I used canvac on mine never had a problem. :thumbsup: Griz

I can't access my photobucket account right now but I will post some photos tonight from home of my setup for a 12'X15' tarp with only two poles.

The photos will show the setup with one guy rope but I've found that I can even do without that. When staked out properly, it has no significant sagging after a rainstorm. The down side of my setup is that you'll lose a significant amount of floor space over what you just had. While it can sleep two, it's better suited for one.

If nothing else, my setup keeps me completely sealed from the weather and at least shows you what is possible.

Link

I just found an old thread to show you the basic setup. Just click on the link. I'll still post photos later which show how I use two poles; one as the upright and the other as a ridge pole. It works pretty slick.

Crikee!

That link is pretty slick. NOW I know folks at juried events don't like single pole tents such as a pyramid, or Ross, or miner's, and I don't know if the loops for the stakes would cause them to judge this as a tent, not a diamond shelter, BUT..., I think I could even rig this pattern without tent loops #7 and #2, and only using ties as are found on other diamond shelters.

Should give a jury at an event apoplexy!

:grin:

LD

The last image shows that I didn't have it set up so that it was stretched particularly tight. I could have easily moved the stacks out to pull the tent tight.

Muskeg,

Thank you for that info, I have also passed it along to a friend.


Dave,

Jurying at the events I have been to has been somewhat relaxed. But in your estimation, how would the people at one of those juried events you spoke of react to my lashed-together "A"-frame configuration?

Thanks,

Birdwatcher

The structural lumber will get you the boot!

It took me 4yrs to find and harvest Cedar of the proper size but I have all natural poles now.
I could have just killed trees and got'm all right away but I looked around till I found standing dead that was right.

Some folks will just harvest green poplar or bass wood each season.

Good luck searching for proper poles.

This is one of the idioms of being PC/HC, what the white folks did was just hack what they needed that day where ever they happened to be then walk away and leave the carnage lay an rot.

Jurying at the events I have been to has been somewhat relaxed. But in your estimation, how would the people at one of those juried events you spoke of react to my lashed-together "A"-frame configuration?

Click to expand...

Lashed, barked poles, nobody will complain. I was thinking that the folding of a retangular piece of tarp into a doored tent with a floor with a single pole..., would give them the vapors. (Normally, one pole tents such as the Miner, Ross, or Pyramid are not allowed, but a rectangular tarp folded (And especially if you went to the trouble of using a natural pole) how could folks object?

I was thinking instead of using stakes..., maybe get two long poles of small diameter, and lay them in the folds between the sides and the floor pieces, and have them stick out a bit and stake down the ends..., then nobody would whine about the tent stake loops sewn on.

LD

I'm fortunate that I can easily find spruce poles of all sizes right in my yard. Spruce, pine, and even birch that grows nice and strait, while no problem here in AK might prove to be a challenge in TX or elsewhere. How about going to a big box home improvement store and picking up some 2" X 2" (or 2 X 4) stock which you could then attack with a drawer knife, plane or spoke shave to get the desired rough look to allow you to pass a juried event.

Good luck searching for proper poles.

Click to expand...

Things are a bit different down here.

Once upon a time the Western two-thirds of Texas including South Texas was a sea of grass, dotted with clumps ("mottes") of Live Oak, with woodlands confined mostly to the watercourses and shaded canyons. Fire kept it that way, many set on purpose by the Indians.

Dunno that much changed after the Spanish came, but millions of feral horses and cattle were added to the mix, especially in South Texas. It is unknown precisely how the introduction of the longhorn affected the buffalo, but in 1830 buffalo could still be found at least as far east as present-day Austin and as far south as San Antonio, although most San Antonians travelled 50 miles or so northwest to find them in any numbers.

Barbed wire and the suppression of fires, along with the attendant overgrazing finished off the native prairie of course. What really transformed South Texas was sheep, by the 1880's nearly five million of them in South and Central Texas. Hardly recalled at all of course in popular history, but the wool industry was largely responsible for the rise to prominence of San Antonio. And those five million sheep were largely responsible for the South Texas brush we are left with today.

Absent fires, there were also two native tree species, both fire-susceptible, that rapidly became noxious invaders.

One is mesquite, the other is Ashe juniper AKA around here as "cedar". Thanks largely to brush, mesquite and cedar the Texas of 2013 scarcely resembles the Texas of 1836.

It was, by all accounts, beautiful :sad:

All of this being a long way of saying that the cutting cedar is of no import down here, encouraged in fact, and ranchers pay large sums of money to try to control it.

As an aside re: greedy White men; it weren't just the White folks of course. A great read on Texas is Pekka Hamalainen's "Comanche Empire" (2009). It really transforms the stereotypical two-dimensional image of that tribe.

By 1840 the 20,000 Comanches were running into problems wintering their vast herds of livestock along the rivers (as late as 1873, those relatively few Comanches still alive and free would trade more than 30,000 head of cattle to the US Army in New Mexico). Besides overgrazing, the problem was rampant deforestation due to cutting of wood for firewood, stripping bark for use as winter livestock feed, and also the usual Texas Indian practice of cutting down pecan trees merely to harvest the nuts.

Also, I believe it is generally conceded that buffalo herds on the plains went into a long-term decline after Indians got the horse, well before White buffalo hunters showed up in any numbers. I will say the 15,000 or so buffalo hides traded every year by Plains Indians at Bent's Fort pales in comparison to the 140,000 deer hides traded by the Cherokees to the Brits at Savannah in 1745, and the astonishing 298,000 deer hides traded in a single year by the Delawares and other tribes. at Fort Pitt (1763?? Anyhoo, them Indians must have had to apologize A LOT to them deer)

Sorry about the lecture :grin: and thanks for the info.

Birdwatcher

So, 2 X 2s from Home Depot then?

I used a masonry water proofing treatment on my rain fly, BlokGuard and Graffiti control II, manufacturer is PROSOCO. Non-solvent based, non staining and is designed for masonry construction, but it works REALLY well on canvas. I treated it once about 6 years ago, it still sheds water. Application is with a pump up Hudson sprayer and just let it dry. It can be found at just about any masonry/consturction supplier.

smokeydays

So, 2 X 2s from Home Depot then?

Click to expand...

Cedar (AKA here as Ashe Juniper).

Walking stick blanks can be had for about $5 per, I already have two, the top 4' of these are generally usable.

I'll cut 'em myself if I can get access (despite its size, there is almost no public land in Texas.)

Birdwatcher

My boy and I are going to the local Cub Scout troop's kickoff tomorrow night so I asked my wife to pick me up one of these Sherwin Williams tarps. She's got it in the trunk... I need to get busy tonight sewing on loops so I can have a Muskeg style shelter for the 2 of us friday night! Only problem now is how do I carry a 9' and a 14' pole in the Civic?

It's a "lock-in" so we can always go back in the church building if my budding primitive shelter skills fail me, but I'm thinking the little guy will get a kick out of the primitive shelter vs. a nylon land pimple.

-GB

You could carry two 5-foot poles and set it up as a pup-tent instead....

Black hand is entirely correct. The beauty of tarp shelters is that they can be set up in any manner imagined.

Only problem now is how do I carry a 9' and a 14' pole in the Civic?

Click to expand...

A simple fix is to get a couple of pieces of foam or some bubble wrap and some cargo straps. Open the Civic's doors. Lay foam or bubble wrap on the roof of the Civic. Lay poles on the foam. Run cargo straps through the open doors and up over the poles on the roof. Cinch straps down. Close car doors. See how easy that was? It's even easier with roof racks!

For cub-scout purposes I just had the Lowes man (once I found him) cut it in half, and I picked up a piece of perforated angle-iron to put it back together again . Picking up some cotton webbing and heavy-duty needles today so I can sew some loops on the tarp this afternoon, and tonight will be the moment of truth! My coworkers think I'm crazy. They may be right.

-GB

Funny, I started just the same way that you did. Did a couple of camporees with my Webelos with Rev War and F&I War themes and I just got deeper into it from there. I started out with whatever thrift shop find I could make do with and just gradually made improvements from there. Now my kids all shoot muzzleloaders and look forward to rendezvous as much as I do. My wife still just humors us. Have Fun!