I bought two of the Nemo "Airbeams" to play with a couple of years ago. They work great. The problem with them was they weighed to much for a really light weight tent.

I think the airbeam idea is great! How about just using the bladders inside and covering them in a tube of noseeum mesh or silnylon to protect them and hold the shape? Would that work? It should be very light.

> heat formed canopy
> It might be possible to heat form the Mylar, although
> I have some doubts. But you could not heat form the
> internal threads! I think that idea has to be abandoned.

Hi Roger,

Actually this does work. North Sails takes Cuben and heat forms it over a mold to put a permanent aerodynamic "shape" in their racing spinnakers. It's an interesting thought experiment to consider doing something similar over a dome or tunnel tent mold.

I was going to say, North Sails does that to all their high end sails now.

Didn't think they did their spinnakers like that though.

Edited by skinewmexico on 01/01/2010 10:42:43 MST.

Interesting!

But the radius of curvature for a spinnaker might be huge compared to what might be needed for a tent? Or maybe not, depending on just what curves you want?
Hum ...

Cheers

Omnipotent! That's the one I said was built like an uninsulated sleeping bag. Man that thing was warm and stormproof. If I could get my hands on a lighter one of those for winter, I would be in UL heaven. However, I would not want the inner to be non-breathable )as in Warmlite tents), having been there, done that and hating the condensation.

I also like the idea of Airbeams such as nemo uses. They are strong, could be made much lighter, and inflate quickly and can't be broken by the wine or snowfall. No reason we couldn't make a cuben tunnel tent with cuben covered air beams...and optional mesh, cuben or nylon inner?

Talk of the Omnipotent had me look it up and I found an interesting website with some very interesting tent history. Take a look at the Early Winters Omnipotent and the Rivendell Mountainworks Bombshelter. Some old, but intriguing designs!

Here is the main page of the gear history section. Some great reading!

Edited by butuki on 01/01/2010 06:33:14 MST.

> I also like the idea of Airbeams such as nemo uses.
> They are strong, could be made much lighter, and
> inflate quickly and can't be broken by the wine
> or snowfall. No reason we couldn't make a
> cuben tunnel tent with cuben covered air beams

Hi Lynn,

That is an interesting idea of a Cuben tunnel tent supported by air beams. I think I'll try sewing a 2.5" sleeve in some ripstop and slip an ultralight bicycle tube into it to see if a bike tube could form the basis of building such a tunnel tent.

The tube is 90 grams with built in high pressure valve. The valve fits readily available pumps and air pressure gauges to allow testing of various pressures and sleeve configurations.

mistake

Edited by scfhome on 01/14/2010 16:53:26 MST.

Given the interest in cuben tents, wanted you all to have a look at this tarp tent with hooped poles on Mount Madison NH in May '78. The tarp was a 9 by 7 foot flat Gerry tarp that came with netting sewn in at both ends, and triangular shaped extensions at both ends. Pole sleeves were sewn on where you see the hoops. In the picture, the extensions are rolled up over the hoops. In the rain, they were rolled down over the guy lines and tightened with a draw cord and cord lock. The floor was just a flat tarp about 4.5 by 7 feet that connected to the sidewalls with snaps. The poles were made in 7 sections each, the bottom four being Adventure 16 aluminum alloy, and the top three, the very flexible Early Winters fiberglass poles shown in a link previously posted on this thread. As earlier noted in this thread, one could also use prebent curved alloy poles for the three middle pole sections, and get about the same shape, and probably more strength. There was condensation on the lower inside panels in humid weather when the end covers were down. Some venting along the bottom sides would have helped. It also could have been made a foot longer to keep out the rain.
Since all this shelter required was sewing on a couple of pole sleeves and installing some snaps and cord loops, something like this might provide a relatively low labor intensive approach to trying out a hooped shelter made from a cuben tarp. Hope it will be of some interest.
Sam Farrington, Chocorua NH

Edited by scfhome on 01/14/2010 20:05:35 MST.

The rivendell bombshelter with its a-frame canopy and straight support poles looks like a good candidate for cuben and carbon fiber poles. The link says it weighed under 6 pounds. How much could you shave off with modern materials?

Nia,

What is the size of the Rivendell Bombshelter and do you have a link to a picture of it?

With that I could give you a very close guess.

I went to a Cuben Hammock with a Cuben Tarp. That combination will work well in the winter with my Cuben Sleeping Bag and a Cuben Down Air Mattress.

I don't think a Cuben Tent is in my future.

Edited by bfornshell on 01/15/2010 08:28:44 MST.

Bill
Most of the info on that tent (that I know of) is to be found here :
http://www.oregonphotos.com/Rivendell-2.html
Franco
BTW , note that Don Wittenberger still has all of the patterns for the Rivendell shelters.
You might be able to contact him via http://www.rivendellmountainworks.com/community.html

Edited by Franco on 01/15/2010 00:46:26 MST.

Thanks Bill. All I know about the bombshelter is from the link that Franco and Miguel posted above.

Seems like it could be boiled down to a doumid + inner tent made out of 20d ripstop + carbon poles. Just a swag from MLDs numbers that would be roughly 12 for the mid + 16 for the inner + ?. Well I have no idea how strong those poles would need to be to match the original design.

One could also scrap the inner tent and just have a heavily reinforced duomid, maybe with some snow flaps to seal it up a bit.

Hammocks can be nice when there are trees. Tarps in heavy, wet snow can be a pain to continually clear. Trees of course would minimize that problem with a little extra shelter.

Did I miss the cuben down mat?

Franco,

I sent an email to Don Wittenberger and asked about a pattern for the Bombshelter for use as a possible "Make Your Own Gear" winter tent project. I inclosed a link to this thread so now I will wait and see if I get a reply.

Nia, I changed that reference to "and a Cuben Down Air Mattress". If I say any more the "Black Helicopters" will come and get me.

Thanks again Bill, but it looks like the "Black Helicopters" have come down and removed your link on the cuben down air mat.

Bill
There was on the Net a PDF of the Rivendell catalogue including specs and pictures of the various shelters , but I cannot find it now.
Franco

> I also like the idea of Airbeams such as nemo uses.
> They are strong, could be made much lighter, and
> inflate quickly and can't be broken by the wine
> or snowfall. No reason we couldn't make a
> cuben tunnel tent with cuben covered air beams

That's a great idea, Lynn. If the weight of poles could be dropped by using inflatables, it opens up all sorts of cool possibilities. I've been toying with the idea of a tent I like to call a "true dome tent". By that I mean it is a geodesic dome, with all the required pieces. The big problem with such a design is that it requires lots of poles. This site, http://www.byexample.com/projects/current/dome_construction/, has several domes, and even the simpler ones use a lot of poles. Connecting the poles would be a lot of work. However, if you could just inflate it (as one big blog), it would be fairly quick. The big advantage of such a structure is that it would be extremely strong.

Back in Sep and Nov of 2006 I bought these Airbeams, an extra small bladder and the small air pump. I wanted to see if they might work for a light Solo Tent. After a few tries I decided they were to heavy for what I was after. In todays "material world" Cuben used for the Airbeam sleeves might bring the weight down to what I was looking for back then.

I went to a Cuben Hammock and a Cuben Tarp. If I every wanted to use a small Solo tent I think I would use a small Cuben Tarp over the tent (think rain fly) but hanging higher. I like to stay as dry as I can and a small Cuben Tarp when it was raining would let me do that.

1. Nemo Air Beam Sleeves: The Air Beam replacement bladder shown is for the smaller / thin Air Beam. It weighs 43.7 grams / 1.54 ounces and is 73.5 inches long. The smaller Air Beam Sleeve w/ Bladder weighs 145.5 grams / 5.1 ounces.



2. Air Beam Pump: Weight is 102 grams / 3.6 ounces.

If you take the extention tubes off of the NEMO small pump, it shaves almost two ounces. Mine weighs in at about 1.75oz.

The Geodesic Dome link from Ross was quite interesting.

I used a large one of those on a climbing trek on Kilimanjaro. The outfitter had supplied it for use as a 12-person dining tent, so imagine one of those with 12 people sitting down to eat inside it. Since it had to be carried to almost 19,000', weight was obviously an issue, so it had been constructed out of curved plastic water pipe pieces with a Tyvek shell. After the evening meal, the porters used it as their sleeping room, so by morning there were bodies stacked up like cordwood.
--B.G.--