So I've been carrying around the old Guild Gear 12x12 for around a year now. It is a great tarp. Just way more tarp than I really need for 3 season. So I decided it was time to DIY one up.
The measurements are:
- Ridgeline - 11ft
- Across - 8 ft
- Sides - 5 ft
- Cat cut - 5 in (1 in/ft)
Made of gray silnylon 2nds from Backwoodsdaydreamer.com and using black 1.9 rip stop from Hancock's for the reinforcement patches.
All lines are 1.75 LashIt.
Used a Dutch hook and figure 9 for attachments.
And made self tensioning guy lines made with 1/8in shock cord clove hitched onto LashIt.
I decided on the dimensions partly because I wanted something between the MacCat Standard and Deluxe, and partly because the geometry was easy.
Thanks to the ancient Egyptians and a dude named Pythagoras I knew that a triangle that was 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide at the base would have a 5 foot hypotenuse. (Slanty side) Since I'm lazy and only wanted to measure an arc once I made all the sides 5 ft in length and used a length of 1/2in PVC I use to form a greenhouse over my garden beds in early spring to form an arc that was 5ft between the two points where it reached the base and 5 in deep. I secured the pipe with tape and traced the arc out on a sheet of paper I had marked every inch. I cut my template out and then set to marking my Silnylon. In order to be as efficient as possible I figured out where the arc would cross the center of the fabric to leave the largest available untouched bits at the ends. When I needed to mark the sides I used a tape measure to determine the two sides of my triangle and then laid my template across the hypotenuse and simply traced. Once I had my two sides I moved my template to the bottom edge between the slants and traced yet again. With everything marked I simply cut and stitched. Seam sealed the finish product today and planning on giving it a test run tonight as storms are in the forecast.
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