Make a Whelen Tent with a Square Tarp

Description

Part of our series of 50 square tarp set ups, this one deserved its own video. Similar to the classic traditional tent, but light and backpackable. I know the true classic camping guys are cringing. This is a great tent made from a tarp. The open front is nice for experiencing the outdoors. Square Tarp PSTL http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=796

Tags: Tarpaulin,Tent,Whelen Tent,shelter,surival gear,outdoors,open front tent

Video Transcription

now this right here is one of those definitely one of the coolest type tarp setups you can do with a square tarp and again we're using our our pstl the large 10 by 10 10 foot by 10 foot now this is in woodland camo this is incidentally this fabric is darn near as lightweight as SIL nylon it's pretty close and but what I pitched up here is kind of it's almost a baker style almost a Weiland style a traditional tent if I were to pitch this tent stake right here so the sides on both sides come straight up and down it would be quite a bit like a baker only a baker has a straight up back wall full always but but anyway dimensionally but the very back side to side we're about seven feet and currently the way we're configured here we're about 11 feet at the front side to side right here at the top of the pitch here we're four five feet just a hair over five feet tall right there so as you can see it gives us a lot of room and it has an advantage over say it's kind of like a lean like a lean-to only we've given ourselves sides so a couple guys could easily sleep in here if they wanted to and be protected you know from the back and both sides and the top and be in pretty good shape just a nice nice setup now this setup is based on a diagonal now I'm gonna have to show you probably a little bit about how to set it up it's a little more complicated I think it's not really complicated but it's a little more involved with some of the other sets but I can I'll show you in the process here of where we're to work to make your folds and you want to put your stakes or anything like that and I'm going to do one other thing I'm going to show you to make it a little more like a Whelan let me show you one thing I can do that makes it almost a wheel intent which is that's a traditional camping tent so let me show you that right now alright so now we have a Weiland style setup now it's not quite the same but it's close other than other than this this awning right here is a little bit different on a wheel in the way it comes out and the sides come out a little bit more than this but but it's pretty darn close you know you can do all these different setups including this really nice Weiland style set up this guy right here was used back in the early days in camping back in the golden era I guess you could say and some of the fuss some of the folks like Whelan and some of them had styles of tents like this that they lived in for months at a time and this a very very nice setup very good all I did is pull my quarter because you know we pitched like I told you we pitched this on a diagonal we fold it under the back corner that's right here I just pulled it underneath here as a ground cloth the front corner right here we just pulled it out and took the first two tabs from the corner and tied out back to the sides here and now we got an awning so now we got now we've got a nice little setup very roomy very comfortable if you are one person that wanted to have all your all your stuff and be pretty nice and cozy this could be the way to do it right here let me show you a little bit about the setup now it's a little bit more involved than some of the others okay so now to give you an idea how you set this up like I say this is actually a diagonal a diagonal setup we're just we're just we're just not using the dial diagonal corners but we're using the advantage of the diagonal so this is where the diagonal corner here

the other is over on the front side on the awning so what you do is you see the tabs here there's a corner one then you go one two in the third one from the corner there's where you put your tent stake we count off on both sides put your tent stake there that forms the back wall right there on this part here yes that part there just folds up inside if you want and now I'll show you the actually there's one other thing you can do you can pull back on this tab right here and you know do a little bit of a pull out if you want to especially the weather is a little heavy or something just to keep this a little taut right here okay so now the next thing we do is we come see this is actually a corner this is a regular corner on the tarp so we're going to stake that out that can be staked out so that it does this when I made it so it pulls out this way a little bit an angle I can stake it out so it's straight up and down vertical walls here if I want to but Mike why not pull it out a little bit it gives you a little bit more room so that's how that goes

okay next you want to have the two poles about five feet tall or four more and ideally this was nice because it had a fork right here and I chopped off the fork and put the tab right here and now again this is the third tab back from the corner just like we did on the back side and that's where this goes and so what we do here we pull this up now it's it's pulled with a it's pulled with a a cord a parachute cord diagonally to the forward and then straight across so that it kites so we can pull both sides we can take out the slack in the middle so that's how we do that all right so coming off the awning here on this side what I did is I came down over here to the tent stake right here that also holds this pole on this right side here now ideal you can see there's a little bit of a little bit of wrinkling in this so if I if I pull if I use just another different tent stake I just lazy I could pull that down part probably a little bit more evenly like they did on the left side I pulled it down to its own stake so so there you go a Whelan style a squealin style tent basically they call this a wheel and tent so it's a Wheeling style tent made out of our pstl or 10 by 10 tarp setup like this so like I say it's not really hard to put up what I recommend is when you put it up don't pound your tent stakes all the way in you might have to adjust them a little bit but I started in the back corners like I showed you back there came to the front and I put my uprights then I did a little bit of tweaking from there and then kind of wound up like this and then when you're all set and down you go around to all your lines tight taut line in them ground all your lines and just snug them down so very very nice setup Weiland tiles Weiland style setup