I have been researching various kinds of wedge tents.

I'm very fond of the basic shape – I like the cool simplicity of a light-colored prism, and contrast it in my mind with a riot of woolly and painted-wood color on the ground plane with bedcoverings, rugs, cushions and trunks.

I'd found this Regia Anglorum site on getelds – an intriguing design, and one found in drawings of the pre-Norman period.  They show it with one side lifted here, but you can also stake that side down, and open either end of that opening, by using half the bell as a door.  Very efficient space-wise.

This page quotes the Uttrecht Psalter (9thc) and the Harley Psalter (early 11thc, so still pre-1066), with these drawings.

Uttrecht Psalter

 

Harley Psalter

Magnunnur's wool, handsewn geteld really inspired me to think wool.  I was just looking for geteld shapes and patterns, trying to learn more about the typology, when I stumbled upon this great writeup of her experimentations.  And it occurred to me – duh, wool is period!  Cotton canvas is not.  Is this game about experimenting with the real stuff or not?

So, last time at Sir's Fabrics, I found a heavy bisque wool fabric called coating, 2/2 twill, one side brushed, 60" wide, for an insanely cheap price, and bought the rest of the roll, which turned out to be 22 yards.  Trigonometry is telling me that ought to be plenty for a wedge basic shape with an 8' high ridgepole, but I wasn't sure if that was a big enough tent…someday I'd like to house two people, one of whom might have a pile of armor…  (Ever the optimist.)

I wanted to see one in use, and hoped to examine tents at Pennsic.  As I'm coming to expect, Pennsic delivered.  There was a class, and four types of tents were available to study, made out of various materials, including wool!

There was the instructor's own desert tent, his second of that type.

This one is canvas, but his first had been wool.  Essentially it's a big rectangle, with a valance, on poles of various heights.  The lowest is quite low, only about 4', but angled to 3'.  The walls of the enclosed half don't go up to the top, so it's always ventilated.  The overall low profile is very resistant to wind…I'm very tempted by this design.

Inside the room, so you can see how the walls tied up.

Detail of jute strap at center ridge of roof, also "button" type fastening, to allow quick-release of sheet walls.

Then he'd also brought a wool yurt. (Didn't bother with pics for it, I don't want the cargo bulk of a yurt.)  He did mention he'd lost a yurt to wind when it was rolled – still necessary to stake down a yurt.

And a wool baby wedge.  These pictures are going to be frustrating to those not familiar with a wedge tent – I was just looking for details.  Do your own research.

I took this picture for the join of the upright and the ridgepole – I didn't ask specifically how this was done, as I'd asked a lot of questions already, and wanted to leave room for other people.  The patterned and colored fabric is a rainfly, that's been waterproofed.  You can kind of see in this picture, that his wool is not like mine – it's tabby, and lighter weight, and not brushed on the outside.  I think my wool will last longer in the rain before misting, but the fly is a good notion.

Here's how the fly is supported on the inside.  I am not sure I'd do it quite like this – I have some other ideas I want to try.

There was a lot of explanation of various types of materials' reaction to weather – wind and water.  I knew that cotton absorbs water, and swells to seal, and you have to be careful about treatments that inhibit this beneficial effect.  But then again, tents can split if staked too tightly, and they swell.

Also, when plasticizing fabrics, if the tent doesn't have a way to breathe out the moisture that we all respire, then you find yourself with a tent raining on the inside – yuck.

This guy likes wool.  He reccs it for its tensioning, and how you don't have to rush home and loosen your ropes when it rains for fear of splitting (as with canvas).  The fly is necessary because although wool is not nearly as absorbent as cotton, the droplets do cling to the hairs, and eventually the fabric's airspaces will saturate enough that subsequent impacts (by raindrops) cause misting inside.  So the fly catches the misting and shields the interior.  But you could vent the fly, or make it so it's removable.  I like the second idea, and have some notions of where to start.

And a canvas geteld.

This is the same tent as the yellow and white shown at the top of the page – he says that the pattern is very good, it's Edward & Ædwen's Small Geteld, here.  The interior had two double mattresses, side by side, in the center, and then there were odd boxes and things around the outside.  That's twice as many bodies as I'd care to sleep in my tent, so I think it'll be enough space for me.  We used the green bell panel as a 'dash-in-and-out' door.

Pennsic allots 250 sf per pre-reserved person, and this design only uses 140 sf on the outside, when closed, and just a bit more than that when open (ropes overlapping), so I'd be contributing to the common area.

That's a 2×6 ridge, which is more than enough for the bending stress (Fb) of such a lightly stressed span, but this was a composite ridge with a Z-lap joint, bolted with standard bolts and T-nuts, which were new to me.  I'm going to want composite vertical poles, too – I'd like to have a maximum pole length of 6', though 8' will fit in my car, a passenger wouldn't be comfortable.  But I'll probably start with whole 8' poles for now, since there's only four, and I don't have to worry about a second person yet.