I finally started on felting for the yurt. Not much, but a sample to figure out shrinkage.

This is one of the batts rolled out on the living room floor. That is a yardstick so you can see about how big it is. It looks grey here but it’s really brown.

Here’s my sample square ready to felt. I used two layers of batt so I can make sure it will be thick and heavy enough to keep out the weather.

It was almost 6″ thick.

And here’s the final sample after felting. It is very thick and sturdy. The wool felted easily but it only shrank 6%. That seems minimal to me. I’m used to 30% so I hope that it doesn’t shrink differently when I do a large wall piece. But after a bunch of math, I figured out that I might just have enough wool for the walls and the roof. Now, we just have to work out exactly how we’re going to pull the big rolled bundle behind the tractor. There is talk from my husband about field draggers, PVC pipe, chain etc. But that’s his job. I’m rolling the felt up around the PVC pipe and he’s going to do all the connecting to the tractor and pulling it around the field.

We’re also still working on the frame and I still have some sanding yet to do. These are the final pieces that I needed to cut shorter for the walls. The ends needed to be cut at a 45 degree angle  as they will be butting up against the door frame.

The next part we started working on is called the tono. It is the center section of the roof where all the roof poles insert. Luckily, we already had this set up for our router. It is to make circles. It is kind of like using a string and pencil to draw a circle.

Here’s one of the circles completely cut.

We saved the extra piece to make the rest of the tono.

Then we needed to cut another circle within the circle. More measuring and the nail is what holds the plastic jig in the center.

 

Here it is as we finished cutting the inner circle out.

 

Doesn’t he look proud!

Here is the first layer cut out. We made three all together that we will glue together to make the wood thick enough for the holes for the roof pole ends.

Then there are pieces that arch up over the flat tono circle. We rigged up a way to use the old center circle and made an arc cut with the router. Now we just have to cut the ends and this piece will be the arch over the circle. It’s a little hard to picture but I’ll show you more photos when we have it together.

So the wall felting will begin in the next two weeks. If you’re in the area and you’d like to join in, let me know and I’ll give you the schedule. I’d love to have you join us!