Yurt Tono

Avelyn came by today and we made progress on her yurt.  She was fortunate to find a babysitter for the youngsters so we could work uninterrupted for as long as we needed to.  While her kids are delightful, they're just young enough to need a lot of attention.  She and her hubby, Michael fitz Geoffrey, finished all the ties for the tono at home, so today we assembled the door frame.  We did all the cutting a couple weeks ago but ran out of time to do the assembly.  Glued and screwed...and then of course, we got it all assembled, then realized that we forgot to put the hinges on.  Doh!  So we took off the last slat (the glue was still wet), put on the hinges, and put the slat back on.  Here she is, happily posing with her door frame!

Next we created a template for the eight quarter-circle sections for the tono.  We laid out our pattern, traced it onto the 1 x 6 boards, and started cutting them apart with the jig saw.

After carefully cutting out all eight pieces, we got side tracked with all the extra wood!  We cut four pieces 11" long and two much smaller ones, and built a little box!  The lid, to the left, is made of two pieces glued together to make it wide enough to cover the box.  It's crudely built and has some rough edges, but it'll be a nice little thing box for those little mundane things you need at events--contacts & glasses (a place to store them at night), keys (a place to keep them so they don't get lost), flashlight (for those late-night trips to the biffy), etc.  It'll be out of mundane vision and you'll know exactly where it is when you need it.

Then, getting back to business, we laid the quarter-circles out and discovered that we made the pattern about 1 1/2" too long.  Bummer....but not irreparable.  Checked the drawings again, we made the correction, trimmed the extra, and laid them out again.  Much better!  We stacked them brick-work style and it looks good!  Like the thing box, the work is a little rough, so we decided to call it a day until we could sand down the edges and make it look really nice before we glue and screw them together.



In all, it was a very productive day. Unfortunately, my back is bent (darn sciatica), my right wrist took a beating with the jig saw and I got two little cuts on my left index finger from the drill that looks like I got bit by a very tiny vampire.  It'll be a couple days of resting it before I get back to work.  Maybe I'm too old and out of shape for that kind of hard labor.


:) Elewys