the net has no geographic boundaries

[cellio]

Several years ago I wrote an article (for an SCA newsletter) on how to build a yurt (aka ger), the portable Mongolian structure. This article found its way onto the web, so every now and then I receive email with feedback or questions.

The latest such message comes from a school teacher who has been having his seventh-grade class build model yurts every year, and after reading my article he thought "why not a real one?". He was writing to me for advice on using local materials (bamboo) in the construction.

This piqued my curiosity. His domain name ended in ".mm", which is unfamiliar to me. To the Google-mobile, batman!

Ok, a group of seventh-graders in Myanmar might build a bamboo yurt based on my instructions.

I don't know why, but I think this is cool.

Comments

[cellio]

It should be flexible and strong, yes. What I'm unsure of is what happens if you drill through bamboo. Does it split? If you can't drill through the pieces, you need to find some other way to attach the pieces of khana (wall) to each other. Assuming you want ot be able to fold it up, you can't just lash 'em together. Or maybe you can with some knot I don't know; I'm hardly an expert. :-) (So I shared my ideas and questions with him, especially that part about not being an expert, and we'll see what happens.)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

Maybe they could soak it to make it less brittle, and then do what I did, and knot it together using leather lace (overhand knot underneath, pull through, overhand knot on top).

It'll take a while, though, and they'll have to be careful and use clamps while drilling so it doesn't turn, since all the holes have to be in line.

Then again... with it being so light, they could use bamboo strips... and even do the bent-end rafters! Ooh, now I wish I could help.

[cellio]

It'll take a while, though

He's got an entire class of students; opportunities for parallel-processing are good. :-) And yeah, I was thinking that with bamboo especially, they should use lace rather than bolts.

and even do the bent-end rafters!

Do you have a pointer to a description of those that I could share with him? I told him I'd seen other ways to do the rafters that might work better with bamboo than my plans, but I didn't have any specifics to give him.