Small Pavilion Tent: Testing

First off my apologies for not getting a post out on friday, or monday, it was the long weekend, and, I was finishing the pavilion tent on friday. That is right, I made this tent is 3-4 days. It was hard, and a bit of a time crunch, but it got done. I even got to put it up on the week end!

From Stuff Maker Blog

I found that I made the frame a bit to small, although it was exactly measured. Their are several factors that may have led to this:

1. Max & Mickel's Easy, No-bake Pavilion called for 1.5" of seem allowance, but only for 1" rolled seems.
   
2. I was going as fast as I could and a bunch of little missed measurements made it just a bit to big.
   
3. I measured a bit to low on the lower roof grommets, about 1" higher would have made a big difference.
   

I am not sure which one. Also, my dad could not get his camera to focus right, really odd. We made the door just seconds before running out our house door to camp. We made it with 2 ties on each side, it was not hemmed and thus had no seems. A quick temporary fix.

From Stuff Maker Blog

Me and my brother in front of the tent before it got blown over by gail force winds, it felt like we were close to a tornado, but I don't think their was even a funnel cloud...

From Stuff Maker Blog

The storm coming on...

The tent fell down, it held up surprisingly long. We set the tent up not expecting heavy wind (rare for the aria), and the tent door happened to face the wind, and with only 6 places attached to the rest of the tent (at the tope and the 4 side ties) it acted like sail. It blew over. When inspected, there was on real damage to the tent. 6 of the 8 plastic stakes had snapped, the week fiber twine I had used on the stakes had snapped.

I am very happy with the progress, I didn't expect to even be able to set it up before the long week end even if I did, I expected it to fall over. It held up to crazy strong wind for 10-15min before falling over with several big defects, I would say it was a success! And with a few small adjustments it will be able to stand up to almost anything!

I will be posting tutorials on how I made the tent, with tips now how to avoid my mistakes over the next few weeks! stay tooned!