Dome-de-dome

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Here’s a little photo tour of our dome building exercise. As I said, the site we were woring on was a bench about 800 feet up. It was a grove of Alder in the midst of Cedar and Sitka spruce. The alders we cut to make space kept us warm for about two years.

Once you’ve knocked a few trees down, the first step is to pound some cedar posts into the ground and start constructing the platform.

Then start building the triangles up, using the pre-cut struts and plywood hubs. The struts have a mortise at each end that slips over the hub. A wooden dowel holds each one in place. The whole works is kind of floppy at first, but it tightens up as you build upwards.

When you finally get to the top, it’s very tight and strong, as you can see here. In fact it is so tight and strong that getting the last hub into place is a real struggle. At this point, you can jump on it or swing from it. Whatever floats your boat. It won’t, however, keep much rain or sun out. Time to put the skin on.

And there ya go! All that’s necessary at this point is to slap on the shingles and figure out how to make triangular windows work.

This shot gives you a bit more of an idea of what the surroundings were like.
Here’s an in-depth article with more information about domes.

Posted by: swampy | 09-09-2008 | 03:09 PM
Posted in: Uncategorized