Dennis and I are still plugging away at the carpentry work on the yurt. This past weekend, we drilled the holes in the tono. The tono is the circle at the top of the yurt that the roof poles fit into. Dennis bought a special drill guide so that we could drill the holes at a 30 degree angle. I can’t imagine how we would have drilled at the proper angle without this guide.

It works really slick. Dennis had measured and marked where all 52 holes needed to be around the outside of the circle.

So now we just need to sand the tono a bit more and it will be ready to paint. You can see that one of the holes is a little bit off. We’re not sure how that happened but it will just have to do.

We also felted two more wall panels on Sunday. Luckily, I got recruitment labor. 🙂  To prevent the felt from sliding around on the PVC pipe, we added a couple of additions. It’s pipe insulation covered with duct tape.

We also had to replace the small inner PVC pipe with a galvanized steel pipe. The plastic PVC was getting eaten by the chain inside.

After the water was applied, all our felting party guests walked on it. Here’s a little video I took:

Because I had helpers, we were able to lay out two walls and get them felted in a day.

Here we are on the first roll of the day.

That’s Paula trying to get rid of some of the air under the plastic.

Is it tight enough?

Now to get the ropes in place to tie the roll.

And tying it up with square knots. If you don’t get it tight enough, it really slides around a lot.

Then the roll is attached to the tractor.

Start off slowly to make sure everything is going to roll properly.

And off it goes. The recipe is 5 times around the field, roll from the other end, another 5 times around, flip the felt over, 5 times around and roll from the other end with a final 5 times around. And it’s felt!! I didn’t get any photos of the finished felt but I will show you all the walls when they are completed. So one more wall panel and then we’ll start on the roof. Progress is being made and I’m shooting for completion by mid October.