Tied Up for 12 Hours

The day after all the wall slats were painted, I returned to Steve and Natalie's house to begin tying more than 700 knots! This task could have benefited from a small crowd's help too, but I didn't want to overburden my friends. Also, I was very naive about how long it would take.

Above you can see the first lattice wall section taking form. If my explanation about the wall slat end pieces in an earlier post was confusing, you can see here how at the end of the wall the slats need to be shorter so you can have a straight end to the section. You can tell that the completed end above joins the door frame because the pieces have been cut at 45 degree angles. This permits the section to be tied flush to the door frame.

The paint of course filled in all the drilled holes a bit, so had to be reamed out before the 5/32" braided nylon rope could fit through. I found that using a drill in reverse worked best for cleaning out the holes. Another key insight is that using a cigarette lighter to melt the ends of the nylon is crap. My thumb was blistered in about an hour and the rope ends were not especially well-melted. A critical lesson of this whole yurt project is that every job has the right tool, even if you are clueless about it. This is where Steve, the man with the tools, saved the day with his propane torch. He would make other key appearances with sweet tools and a helping hand time and again when I hit moments of frustration. Steve probably would have been right at my side the whole time helping out if he weren't in the middle of stripping all the paint off his house. He is eager to make his own yurt once the house is done, so I'll get a chance to repay his help then.

Anyway, back to the knots. I cut off about a 15' length of the rope and melted one end into a tapered kind of needle. For this work the lighter actually proved capable, as I used the bottom of the lighter itself to shape the melted blob of nylon against the concrete in between warming it with the lighter flame. After tying a knot in the non-needle end of the rope, you can thread the cord from the bottom through the two slats that are being tied together. A pair of needle-nose pliers is handy if you run into trouble forcing the rope through the two holes -- but as I got better at properly tapering the needle I rarely had issues. Once the rope is through and the first knot is snug on the other side, I hold as much tension as possible to join the slats very tightly and tie the second knot. Then you cut off the rope about half an inch or so above the knot and tie another knot in the end of the long piece. Whenever the rope runs out, you just cut off a new length from the spool and melt a new needle on one end.


The first wall section has been fully tied and it feels oh so good to finally have one completely finished component of the yurt ready! It only took about 4 hours. Fortunately, like many other aspects of the project, getting the first piece of a set done takes hugely longer to figure out and perfect your process. By the time I got to the last of the four wall sections the following day, I had the work down to just a bit more than 2 hours.

After all the knots on a wall section were tied, I fired up the torch and turbo-melted the ends of all the rope to prevent fraying. Flip the wall over to repeat on the other side. It wasn't until the second wall that I realized I could accordian the wall down into a much smaller section as below. Not only does this make torching the rope faster and easier, but this ingenious feature is what permits the nomads in Mongolia to move their yurts from place to place with great ease.

The compressed wall lattices are almost 6'6" tall, but (from memory) only about a foot and a half wide. The below photo of one wall section leaning against my car gives a sense of scale to the expanded wall. Pretty amazing size difference! Would you have guessed that four of these wall sections could fit INSIDE this car? I almost didn't even try it. The rear seats can't fold down, but moving the front passenger seat all the way back and reclining it down all the way, I was able to stack all four walls slanting up from the passenger foot well almost to the rear seat's headrest. Amazing! I'm gonna be an urban nomad.

Painting the Town Red

After so many nights and weekends toiling in Jason and Angela's basement cutting, drilling, sanding, and surforming, I was elated to have finally finished all the woodworking on the wall slats! Nevermind that the roof ring and roof rafters were still in progress, because it is time to paint the wall.


Traditional Mongolian yurt frames are typically painted either bright red or orange. I'm fanatical about the color orange, but to my surprise I preferred the look of red yurts from my online research. When I began to investigate the different kinds of paint available, milk paint caught my fancy. I don't know what kind of paint is used in Mongolia, but milk paint is a simple paint with a long history. Ancient cave paintings were done with a form of milk paint. Up until WWII, milk paint was widely used in America for painting furniture, toys, barns, etc. Milk paint was made at home with milk protein, clay, lime and whatever color pigment you could find or make. The paint is very long lasting, almost odorless to paint with, environmentally friendly, and non-toxic once dry. I'd love to try making my own milk paint some day, but I'm on a tight schedule today so I chose to buy my paint.

Painting is one of the few yurt-building tasks that can be well-tackled by a small crowd, so I recruited Adriane, Amos, Matt, Sam, and Suzi to help out. I brought my camera that day, but in all the supervising commotion I neglected to take any photos of my wonderful helpers and I doing the painting! It was fun though, with witty banter all around and a delicious lunch spread from New Seasons.


Even with our numbers, it still took about 3-4 hours. Probably the witty banter slowed us down. Anyway, the wood is first wiped with a damp cloth to clean the saw dust off and give the paint a clean surface to grip. Then we used foam brushes to liberally coat all sides of the wall slats. Since the paint is water-based, clean-up wasn't too bad. Above you can see most of the full-length wall slats painted and drying. The red came out in a perfectly lovely shade that makes me very happy. I was also happy as all get out at the generosity of Steve and Natalie to yield their front yard (and later their garage, driveway, basement, and back yard) for my yurt project. I have been unendingly fortunate to have all the help, space, and support I needed for this project fall in my lap just as I needed it.

Lastly, hats off to Alton the dog (who lives with Steve and Natalie). Alton was a dear and never ate my stuff. Just imagine the self-restraint required of a puppy who is surrounded by a hundred sticks with which he cannot play. Alton is made of tougher stuff!

Cutting wall lattice end pieces

Although my lattice wall sections are mostly made of the 6'6" slats cut to length and drilled previously, when you get to the end of a lattice section you have to cut these short to make a square end. You can see a few of the shorter wall slat boards that are used at the ends of a wall lattice in the photo above. A sixteen foot yurt has four wall sections. These four sections are joined in a complete circle with a 'joint' at each side of the door frame and three joints between adjacent wall sections.

The wall slats are cut at the ends to make a straight line vertically when the wall is standing upright. For the wall-to-wall joints, the cuts to each slat are made straight while those ends joining the door frame are cut at a 45 degree angle so they can be tied flush to the door frame. While you could just make the right number of 6'6" slats and then cut these to get the end pieces you need, my lumber situation dictated a bit more effort.

I started with 8' boards, so already with the standard slats I have a foot and a half of unfortunate waste. I've also lost more boards to flaws in the lumber than I expected. I only bought 5% more wood than I needed and that margin is starting to look scarily thin. Fortunately a bit of resourceful creativity can save the day.

My flawed boards had large knots or other problems in the center of their lengths that I didn't think I could work around. But then I realized that the shorter wall end pieces could be cut from either side of these flaws with minimal waste. You can only get one 6'6" length out of an 8' board, but you can make better use of the full 8' when carefully calculating which shorter lengths to double up together and cut out of 8' with hardly any waste. The end pieces come in lots of different lengths, so this flexibility was available. It took me a lot of extra time to measure, calculate, count, and double-check. But in the end I was able to get all the wall slats I needed out of my existing lumber without having to head back to the lumber yard, so it was a huge personal victory for me!

More Work, Less Writing

I got in the habit of not posting to the blog there for a while. When all you do is sand, sand, repeat, there ain't much to document. It took me days and days to sand all the sharp edges off the wall poles. More sanding for the roof ring to clean it up, and then cutting and sanding the crown pieces for the top of the ring. And despite all that hard, back-bruising work, it is hard to tell a difference from photos. But you can tell immediately on touch. Everything is more refined after the hard, sharp edges have been taken off.

So there I was not blogging my sanding, and then I headed to Alaska for a week -- which was mind-blowing. So few humans, so much wilderness. I loved it: more snow-capped mountain peaks than you could count, spawning salmon, momma bear and cubs, salmon on the fishing line, picturesque coastal villages, salmon in my freezer. I will return. But then I landed back in Portland all in panic under the pressure of time and the overwhelming sprawl of work that yet lay before me. So blogging has been on hold, although much progress has been made. Dear reader, please return in a few weeks and you'll be able to see the rest of the story -- including playa pictures.

Screwed, Glued, and (not) Tattooed

The eight quarter circle sections have now been joined with glue and screws to form a laminated ring. Getting there was a bit bumpy though. Although it may look pretty decent in the photo, notice the lighter colored patches where I've applied wood filler to plug up gaps in the ring caused by warped wood sections. None of the eight sections were perfectly flat, and several were visibly twisted and warped. They were flat enough I thought. The woodworking world was conquered with an armful of clamps and a handful of screws, right?

Here is the first clamp and screw job, as it were. In my haste, I forgot the first rule of glueing. Before you take the cap off the glue bottle, make sure every piece, every tool, every paper towel for cleaning your fingers part way through, every detail you can think of, is completely ready to go. For example, it would be poor planning to leave the special driver bit that comes with the fancy exterior wood screws I'm using in the box rather than having it already snug in the drill's chuck. It would also help to have the exact number of screws you need conveniently at hand. I blew it on both of these things and a few more besides. Fortunately, there is a special trick to adjust wood you are glueing together after the glue has begun to set. Simply take a mallet and whack the pieces into place.

Anyway, the first glue up is the most difficult here anyway because you need to make sure your alignment will permit the rest of the pieces to form the best circle. Kind of tricky with a 3' circle of warped boards. I did okay.


An hour later after the glue has set enough to remove the clamps, I get ready to add another top and lower section to the ring. I am careful to have all my ducks in a row and it goes pretty well. I laid all eight sections together as intended and then traced the edges of the new lower section onto the table with a pencil. This way when I start joining the new pieces to the ring I can verify if the alignment is right (firmly clamping the previously joined ring pieces to the table first is key here to prevent things moving around). Notice that my workbench today is my desk. I needed something big and as flat as possible for this job.


Here goes the third top section. I'm feeling confident and happy now with my results. After the glue dries, just one last section to add. Piece of cake!


Of course I notice that the two lower sections that are below the final upper section are a bit out of alignment. I was pleased at how closely they kiss, but one is about a third of an inch higher than the other. What's worse, they kind of twist in opposite directions. Before glueing, I put the top section in place and find the best locations for all my clamps to force all the mating faces as close to flat as possible. It ain't bad. I trace around the jaws of the clamps so I know exactly where to put them when glueing.

So then I liberally apply glue on all the mating faces and drop the last section into place. I carefully clamp it gradually here and there to pull the three pieces into the same plane with each other without pushing them out of whack in one direction or the other. It's looking great, so I reach for the drill. After putting three screws in on one side to join to the first lower board, I start to drill the other side in. When driving the second screw in, I hear a bad sound.


See the crack in the lower part of the ring? The bottom piece has completely split into two fragments. Crap, crap, crap! There was a fair amount of stress on the wood from being torqued against it's will. When the screw went in, the tension was released in a cleavage passing diagonally through the screw's entry point. Here's how it looks from inside the ring.


This makes me a mildly unhappy camper. At the last moment, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory! I assess my options quickly. Half of the section which split is already firmly glued and screwed to the rest of the ring, so swapping it out completely would not be straight-forward. The smaller fragment of this piece is held by one screw and a decent amount of glue, so I decide to patch up the crack later.

Today I filled all the minor gaps and this big crack with some wood filler. I thought the filler was supposed to be strong, but after applying it I now think it would have been better to just stuff in a small scrap of wood cut to fit the crack and glue the whole mess up. My plan now is to reinforce this section with some metal bracing on the inside or wrapped around like a band. Wish me luck.

Real Mongolian Gers

Today I had the great pleasure of seeing some authentic gers imported from Mongolia. Last week at a Burning Man work party, I was talking to a guy about my yurt project and he told me there were a bunch of imported yurts on Sauvie Island. I already had plans with some friends to go to the island today to pick blueberries, so afterwards Suzi and I drove further up the island to find the gers. By the way, ger (rhymes with 'hair') is just another name for yurt -- although I think ger is what the Mongolians call them. Anyway, when we pulled up to the camp ground where they are located, I was excited to see a big cluster of them. I could also see two gers in the process of being erected, so we could examine the roof ring and roof poles up close. You can see part of the wall lattice to the right of the ring in this photo:


These gers are being permanently set up on concrete slabs. They are part of a private camp ground where you can rent a yurt or a tent site. Next to the ring were all the roof poles:

I had called the camp ground a few days ago to ask if it was okay to stop by just to check out the yurts, and they didn't mind. Luckily for us, the yurts were not secured and we could go inside them. The built-in sky light is dramatic:


The two supports below the roof ring are not structurally necessary, and my yurt will not have them. Although they can be beautifully carved and decorated I want uninterrupted open space inside my yurt. While we were inside checking it out, Suzi commented that it was much cooler than she expected. It was a pretty hot day today. I had read that letting up the cover of a yurt a little bit on the sides provides excellent ventilation because the cooler air comes in from the bottom and the hot air rises and leaves the yurt through the open top. This yurt didn't have the cover raised, but the door was open when we got there and that must be enough. There was another ger with the roof ring covered and the door closed, and it was much warmer inside it. I was thrilled to know the yurt can get good ventilation on the playa where the heat can get much hotter!


I took a ton of photos, including many close ups of details I was interested in copying. I learned how the walls are attached to the door frame and how the cover is tied as well. The doors are bright and beautifully painted. My yurt will be bright red instead of orange, but I hope to do some detail painting as well. In the above photo you can see the light from the roof ring shining onto the floor of the yurt. After living in a yurt for a while, you can tell the time of day just by where the light strikes the walls and floor!


In all we counted 11 gers, including the two that were not completely set up yet. After a good spell of blueberry picking and some prancing about to take these pictures, the sun was just too much for me and I started to feel some heat stroke coming on. Even with sun block on my bald head, I think a hat is a must for me to protect my brains from cooking. I let Suzi drive us back to the city. She gave me some headache pill and after some fluids and a nap, I was able to function again by the late afternoon. As I slept, my dreams danced with views like this last one.

Other Playa Yurts

The main impetus for my yurt project is to bring it to Burning Man. After last year I was thinking about buying a geodesic dome until my friend Alexis told me I should just make a yurt instead. As many people as I meet now who are familiar with yurts, I am so surprised it was the first time I had heard of them. Obsession came on very quickly. Fast forward nine months and I'm finally heeding the fabulous advice of Alexis.

Anyway, I was certain my yurt wouldn't be the first one on the playa but it wasn't until tonight that I stumbled upon examples of those who came before. Very cool stuff, but I was relieved to notice that the traditional style I'm going for wasn't represented. Perhaps I am breaking new ground in some small way.