Tipi project: Part two

A little update on my tipi project.

The poles

I now have 12 of the 14 poles for the tipi. I make them out of spruce, mainly trees which are already dead. I have removed the bark from five of them, and god it's heavy work. Each pole takes 30-60 minutes. The biggest problem was that they move around and turn when I try to use the drawknife on them. But after a while I decided to strap them and it got much easier and faster. Now I average a little over 30 minutes per pole. I put as as a goal to do two per day... But now a cold is delaying me a bit. Either way there is no hurry with the poles. I won't put the tipi up until spring I think since I plan to paint it and need to do that in spring weather.

The materials

The fabric arrived yesterday. It doesn't seem too thick to sew with my machine. However it's a bit lower quality than I had hoped. The threads are thick and a bit loose. And there is no impregnation. As much as I hate synthetic impregnation I think it's important on a tipi in the climate up here. So I might have to impregnate it myself. If someone has tips of what to use, please let me know!

Here is the complete list of materials and prices (updated) 

800m extra strong polyester sewing thread 26€

80m cooking cotton thread for hand sewing 6€

10 sewing machine jeans needles 18€
Set of hand sewing needles 3€
2 steel rings (for smoke flaps) 4€

60 meter of braided hemp rope 10€ on second hand (only 40m is actually needed)

1l tar for the painting 17€

Pigment (red iron oxide) for painting 2€

I will also use raw linseed oil for the painting which I had from before.

The fabric was 151€ plus 39€ extra vat because I live on Åland and we have to pay double vat here...

This totals to 276€

Painting

I mixed the paint already to get the proportions right. What seems to work is this:

1 dl tar

2 dl linseed oil

3 tablespoons of red iron oxide pigment

The final sketch

Now the sketch is final. I might start cutting the fabric today if this cold allows for it. Click it to see it bigger. The star is the center of the circle. It's outside of the tipi to make it tilt back a bit. A tipi is not a perfect cone, and the bottom is not circular but oval. The cone is tilted back a bit to give a straighter back wall which gives more room to stand and less risk of dripping from the poles over the sleeping area.

Update: As usual nothing is ever final. So I have updated the sketch again, October 19 2016

Click here to download the plan as an Adobe illustrator document in scale 1:100.