Cuttin' & Sewin'

Started doing the fittings for the roof and came up 2" short of fabric then discovered that I had given myself much more ease than I needed. So after some trimming I think I have the roof worked out.


I'm going to finish only half of the seams so I can dismantle it in the future for decorating. After one more fitting I will focus on the front panels for the umbrella.

Back to Work!

Fabric has been scrounged, The wooden extensions were tested and measurements have been taken!

This week I will pattern out the sections and start cutting the fabric to give this thing some life. Soon we will be able to move on to the additions for the counters.

Bit by Bit

Started working on the rib extensions for the top peaks. I'm using some cheap 1x2s cut to about 15". There will be about 8" of overlap with the metal ribs. I'm testing it with pine but will likely move up to something better if it works.

I want to not only work out how much to extend the frame but also testing if the ribs can handle the extra weight. Once the extension is determined I can go about patterning the fabric for the umbrella.

So far slotting the pine has been a pain. The Dremel wants to follow the heavy grain in the wood. I'll need to switch to the router and make a jig.

Return to the umbrella

Well this project got bumped from the Tiki Invasion time-line for the Inlatable Moai project. Today as I was working on far more important stuff, my computer pointed out that I hadn't charged my mouse lately. So in my mouse-charging downtime I put in a bit of effort on this project.

Next step is to start patterning the umbrella panels. Now, I could use my mighty geometry skills to work out all of the angles but sadly I left those in high school. So my solution is to isolate the movement of the spines and simply measure distances.

Here is a photo of the cotton twill tape used to set the distance between the spines.


Once I get that where I like it I can start looking at deciding how much overhang I want.

WTF?

Ok, it occurs to me that I have been a bit vague about this phase of the Fez-o-rama booth.

If you scroll way the hell down to the beginning of this blog you will see TofuJoe's excellent idea for the new booth. Now while I do plan to one day implement this, it will have to wait until I get my hands on a rolling mill to produce the rings needed. In the mean time I had been trying to work out how to make the top open like an umbrella. Ease of set-up/strike is very important to our booth designs.

Then one day I read a Humu Kon Tiki blog about a Tiki Central post by Sabu The Coconut Boy regarding the 1962 Hawaiian Pavilion at the Seattle World's Fair. (gotta love the cyclical world we live in)I don't know what it is about that roof but it has haunted me since seeing this picture.

So here is the idea. Find an umbrella to mod to imply this roof line. Well I couldn't find an umbrella with 12 spines (what we determined to be the minimum needed) so the next thought was to take two umbrellas with 6 spines and meld them together. One trip to Big Lots later and I was the proud owner of two mod-able umbrellas.

First Joe and I broke them down and worked out how to do the mods. Luckily the construction was quite simple. Plastic housings and tie wire. So Joe cut 6 more grooves into the cap.
You can see one of the handmade cutouts in the center of the photo.

We assembled both of the lower sliders onto one pole to allow us a bit of adjustment if needed.

To create the up/down of the original roof we needed to move the pivot of the upper set of spines. We simply drilled out the rivets and moved the hole back on the spines.
Finally here is a shot of the frame open
and one closed. As you can see we would need to make a few more cuts to allow the frame to close more but it works as it is.

So there you go, all caught up now.

Frankenbrella

Work continues on the new addition to the Fez-o-rama booth. The Umbella frames have been dismantled and are currently being assembled into a Frankenbrella! Now I just need to pick up some hardware to replace the rivets we drilled out.

Update

The exploratory surgery on the first umbrella has begun but not too far.

I'm afraid this project may get sidelined as many things have come up that need my attention. Worse case senario we roll out the current version of the booth with a tarp for shade. Let's hope for the best.