If you want to avoid trouble with a leaky tent, the following solution is a "sure cure;" Take a gallon or two gallons of turpentine and one or two cakes of paraffin, drug store size. Chip the paraffin fairly fine; dump it into the turpentine. Place the turpentine in a pail and set same in a larger pail or a tub of hot water. The hot water will heat the turpentine, and the turpentine will melt the paraffin. Stir thoroughly, and renew your supply of hot water if necessary. Then pile your tent into a tub and pour in the turpentine and paraffin mixture. Work the tent all over thoroughly with your hands, so that every fiber gets well saturated. You must work fast, however, as the paraffin begins to thicken as it cools; and work out of doors, in a breeze if possible, as the fumes of the turpentine will surely make you sick if you try it indoors. When you have the tent thoroughly saturated, hang it up to dry. It is not necessary to wring the tent out when you hang it up. Just let it drip. If you use too much paraffin the tent may look a little dirty after it dries, but it will be all right after you have used it once or twice.
An Open Outing Tent
By Warren H. Miller, Editor "Field and Stream."
To make an open outing tent, get thirteen yards of 8 oz. duck canvas, which can be bought at any department store or dry goods store for seventeen or eighteen cents a yard. This makes your total expense $2.21 for your tent. Layout the strip of canvas on the floor and cut one end square; measure up 8 inches along the edge and draw a line to the other corner. {171} From this corner layoff 7 ft. 8 in. along the edge and on the opposite side, layoff 5 ft. 9 in. beginning at the end of your 8-in. measurement. Now take a ruler and draw another diagonal across the canvas at the ends of these measurements and you have the first gore of your tent. Cut it across, turn the gore over, lay it down on the strip so as to measure off another one exactly like it. This is the corresponding gore for the other side of the tent. To make the second pair of gores, layoff 5 ft. 9 in. along one side of the remaining strip of canvas beginning at the pointed end, and 3 ft. 10 in. on the other side. Join these points with a diagonal and you have a second gore, a duplicate of which is then cut by using it as a pattern, reversing and laying it down on the strip of canvas. To make the third gore, layoff 3 ft. 10 in, on one edge of your strip beginning at the point, and 1 ft. 11 in. on the other side. Draw a diagonal across and you have the third gore.
How to cut up your strip of canvas
Forester tent pattern
Forester tent with hood
You have now used up all but two yards of your canvas, plus a little left-over piece of about two feet long. Out of this little left-over piece make a triangle 1 ft. 11 in. on the side, which will form the back triangle of your tent. Now pin your three gores together to make the side of your tent, just as in the illustrations, and pin the two sides together along the ridge. Then sew this tent up. Sew in the little back triangle and hem all around the edges. Leave a hole at the peak of the little triangle through which the ridge pole must go.