Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Those of you who have made parachute tipis

For those of you who have made tipis out of parachutes...

Had them out in the rain much? What's the performance like? When you do a "cup test" of your parachute fabric to see how much water runs through, how well does it perform?

I've never made one but have a bit of parachute "history" in my past. I'm thinking you'd likely want a reserve chute for your shelter, unless you have a large shelter in mind. An inflated reserve is 28ft in dia, a main parachute is 35'. One of the AK forums has some pics of one a guy rigged up. IIRC, he just calculated what circumference he wanted and removed enough gores from the chute to achieve that distance, added a zipper, and sewed the rest together. He planned to use it in subfreezing temps and didn't bother trying to waterproof it. The newest 28'reserve is a calendared material that should be quite water resistant. Thick wall rigid aluminum conduit would work for a center pole, and the 4 Dog Ti stove would be the ultimate stove, IMO.

there's a bit more to it than that. an inflated chute is dome shaped and in order to get a tipi/pyramid shape, material/fabric needs to be removed and shaped so that the tension of the walls is correct. otherwise, sag is an issue.

What part of that did you not understand? A "gore" is a panel of a parachute, I was pretty sure Evan knew what that meant.

do you have one? i do. and it is not just a matter of removing a "gore" or three. the dome into pyramid transition is more complicated than that because, the "gore" is curved to the shape of a balloon or ball. the flat sides of a pyramid have no curvature so by just removing panels, you do nothing but elongate the dome.

the best way for me to describe this is: picture a basketball cut in half. some SHAPING as well as material removal is necessary to produce the flat sides of the pyramid panel. by simply splitting panel seams, you will not end up with a flat sided panel needed to form a conical structure. the panels will need to be modified as well as removed.

a crude tipi shape can be made by minimal modification to a parachute but to get a proper tight pitch, serious labor and sewing is involved. good luck.

Well, thanks for all the help whambam. I knew you'd come through for us.

What 'chute did you use? What other mods were involved? I guess we didn't really need to know.

I've already got the chute, but don't know exactly what it is. De-milled US is all I know (and olive green). Anything with seams that long is going to take "serious labor and sewing"! That's why I was hoping to find out if it made sense to even invest my time in a shelter made out of this particular fabric.

not at all. information should educate as well as inform, not mislead people into attempting the futile. go [bleep] yourself.

I dont sew so take this suggestion with a grain of rock salt:

I would think the easiest way to take "the dome" out of a parachute is to stretch each seam out straight with a little tension, then fold over and fix with pins, tape or glue the extra cloth.

It might work to use a wooden straight edge to tension the fabric and use staples to hold everything in place while going through the machine.

Next you sew one stitch to define the new seam, trim the excess and then do one of those fancy folded over seams to make it strong.

Im only mentioning this because a lot of projects seem more manageable if you can avoid actually using a tape measure.