Tent sewing question

Andy
When I made that tent and all of my other shelters, I paid no attention to what direction the weave was going. I haven't noticed any ill effects of that. Others with more knowledge and attention to detail might not agree. As far as the cat cut, I started out by making the whole tent with no cat cuts at all. When I tried to stand it up I could not get a taught roofline at all. I then took the long seams apart that run from the peaks along the roofline to the base and re-cat cut them. This made all the difference in the world. A nice tight ridgeline and panels.

Let me know if I can answer any other questions. If you would like the google scketchup file I used to design the tent let me know.

Good luck

Ben

There's a small difference between width wise, and length wise on fabric. Better to have all the panels the same, but this is probably not significant.

There's a big difference between length/width wise (along grain), and at an angle (on the bias). Bias stretches a lot more. Better to on ridgelines, have the two pieces the same. So, for your two "beak" panels, have them meet on the bias (along the zipper). Have the other edge be on the grain to match the end pieces.

Where the end pieces join with the back piece, there's probably no solution – back piece on bias, end pieces along grain.

If you just have one peak, then the back piece and end pieces could meet on the bias. A regular mid has all pieces meet on bias.

I would have cat cuts on at least the two rear ridgelines and the zipper. The two front ridgelines don't matter much, at least if you're doing silnylon. The top ridge between the two peaks probably doesn't matter because it's short.

Ben, Thanks much for the input. I may well contact you again as I go along.

Jerry, Thank you too. So the two end panels will have the weave running straight along the panels and the vestibule panels with the weave matching with the weave of the end panels. I'm not sure what you mean by the "back piece". Both sides of the tent have vestibules.

Andy

never mind : ) I though back piece was just one flat piece. Vestibule will be good.

Ok, thanks. :)

I've made a tent using two bias approaches for the vestibule panels.

In the original, I had the straight grain of the vestibule panel overhead, meeting the main panels:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=56641&skip_to_post=477981#477981

In the most recent one, I oriented the vestibule panels to have the straight grain along the outer edge, not overhead:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=100402&skip_to_post=850353#850353

The verdict for me if I made another:
Align the straight grain overhead (my original approach) with one change: crank up the catenary cut on the outer perimeter edge of the vestibule!

To explain, the original was MUCH easier to sew. Trying to stitch the straight grain against the bias was a major pain, and it accounted for a lot of the sewing time. In addition, the original was easier to set up since you can get the roof seams really tight.

The only downside of my first tent was that the bottom of the vestibule would flop in a light breeze. I corrected this later by recutting the edge to have a larger catenary curve. It worked well enough for me.

Thanks Sean. I was looking at your thread on your silpoly solo tent too. What do you think of the silpoly for the roof?

One other question Sean, what weight of silnylon did you use on your floor? Thanks.

It's made w/ silpoly version 1. Sadly I haven't been able to use this tent in a good storm yet, so I'd have to defer to others experiences there. Silpoly 2.0 sounds like it would be ideal.

The floor was made w/ traditional 30d silnylon, since it might be superior to silpoly in terms of abrasion resistance.

I've used thru-hiker Shield silnylon for floor and it's been waterproof. About 1.5 oz/yd2

Thanks for the inputs. Kyle at Ripstopbytheroll said the same thing about the silpoly, that it was designed for tarps and such, and that silnylon would probably be a better choice for the floor.

Now I just need to decide if I want to take the plunge and do this, or if I want to do a tarptent, or a tarp and net-tent, or…. ARGH! Too many choices! :)