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Canvas summer tent

I think you can get it bug proofed Robin. It will help if your tent has a sod cloth for sealing the perimeter around the floor and add a ground sheet.. For the door you can sew or Velcro the bug screen across the top and velcro the sides and sew a 12" sod cloth to the bottom to seal that up. My campfire tent bug screen is sewed at the top and has zippers at the sides and the sod cloth at the bottom. One of my baker tents has Velcro on the top and sides to match the screen. The benefit of not sewing the sides is that you can roll it up so it is out of the way when not needed.

This summer I took the bug screen from the baker tent and used it to seal front of the open vestibule area of my campfire tent. I just rolled up some of the tent canvas with the bug net and held it together with spring loaded hand camps. Three clamps on the top and three more on each of the sides was all it took to hold things together. I was happy with the way it went up but never got out to try it.
 
canvas tents don't easily get small holes burned in them by fire sparks, besides they smell nice. I would want a sewn in floor to keep blackflys out, those buggers have crawled under my bug net. An open front tent that tapers to the ground in back is a Whelan tent, A Baker tent has a short wall in back-there advantages to both. .I love them both-I like being able to see out. Turtle
 
Not a traditional look, but two huge doors and windows on the gable sides, all with bug mesh. The tent stands in 5 minutes. Zippers, canvas and floor are all good quality. I have used mine for many trips and I am very happy with it. It also holds up very well in windy conditions. I wish the poles were aluminum instead of steel to cut down on weight a little, but you said weight doesn't concern you too much. :)
https://www.competitiveedgeproducts.com/Kodiak-6086-Canvas-2-Person-6-x-85-Flex-Bow-Tent_p_2340.html
 
Dagger said:
Not a traditional look, but two huge doors and windows on the gable sides, all with bug mesh. The tent stands in 5 minutes. Zippers, canvas and floor are all good quality. I have used mine for many trips and I am very happy with it. It also holds up very well in windy conditions. I wish the poles were aluminum instead of steel to cut down on weight a little, but you said weight doesn't concern you too much. :)
https://www.competitiveedgeproducts.com/Kodiak-6086-Canvas-2-Person-6-x-85-Flex-Bow-Tent_p_2340.html
Click to expand...

That is one ugly tent. However it rides out winds very well. Back in the '70's Coleman made this design out of nylon. We had a six person for our four person family and took it out West. In Rocky Mountain NP we had a horrific storm that shredded some tents and flattened others. This one rode out the storm well with us in it and really did not budge.

We got rid of it as not long after we got into canoe tripping with portages and I didn't want to tote the beast!

I don't recall that the poles were anything but aluminum. But not weeny alu.
 
Springbar out of Utah makes similar tents. Their 2 person model https://springbar.com/collections/al...compact-suntan is 6" shorter but 4" taller and weighs 8 pounds less (22 vs 30) compared to the 2p Kodiak tent. It also has two doors but no side windows, which would be a disadvantage for summer camping. Springbar has been around since the 40' and they use aluminum side poles with no problems. I wanted to buy their tent really bad because it was/is made in the US. Unfortunately, my budget did not allow the extra $300 at the time.

The downside in my particular area of tripping is geology, and the fact that this type of tent, along with many other canvas tent styles, requires at least the corners to be staked down well. Driving those 4 tent stakes in an area where top soil above granite slabs is either absent or very shallow, can be a frustrating experience. The upside: As I am effortlessly capable of tripping over just about anything in camp, I appreciate that neither Kodiak nor Springbar tents need any guy lines! :)
 
Boatman53 said:
That is a nice looking tent Robin. Who makes it or did I miss it by not paying close attention?
Jim
Click to expand...

Boatman,
The Nordisk is a great looking tent. The price I found on a European website is close to $500 incl. shipping to the US. Although, that is only the tent! One also has to purchase the so called "Mini Colour Pack", for an additional $150, if one wishes to also have tent stakes and the correct tent poles for this tent. BUT that small additional investment includes "...cool coloured zipper pullers and one clothes lines for hanging small gear and clothes inside or outside the tent"! I mean...who wouldn't want that? ;) I have never seen any manufacturer offer a tent without the poles (aside from maybe big wall tents). Having to buy all kinds of extras to get a decent product may be a European thing. It reminds me of the time I lived in Germany and was looking to buy a car. US and Japanese cars back then always came loaded. German (or French or Italian) cars not so much. Oh you wanted a steering wheel with that? That will be extra. You wanted a 5-speed instead of 4-speed? That will be extra. Seats? Yes we have seats available...for a little extra of course. Of course! :)
 
This is sliding sideways but still relevant to discussion. Free-standing vs non-fs. I'm facing the same conundrum with tent shopping. I don't really need another tent but since when does need enter into the equation. We own 3 nylon tents only one of which is truly free-standing but it is a bit of a brute at >10lbs. Mind you it is a 3-4 person solid dome so it has that going for it. And it comes in it's own duffle bag. The smaller simpler 3 season tents that I've seen all require guying out the fly to maximize air flow between tent and fly layer fabric. You'd think that going with a single layer system would eliminate the tie out issue but not necessarily. Up to now I've relied on roots and rocks to tie to but this past autumn the ground conditions let me down several times in several locales.
Getting back to summer canvas, I've always loved the baker style but have yet to pitch one. Baby steps? Maybe I should try a canvas tarp for starters?
https://outhaus.co/
 
As for guyouts and free standing and non freestanding, both have to be pegged and properly tied out!! A free standing tent doesn’t mean you don’t have to “peg” it down, it just mean that when erected the tent stand on its own!! Not anchoring the tent in anyways is a big mistake!!
 
Rocks are my friend and sometimes even in the Shield suitable rocks are hard to find. I am always grateful to find an old ( but not historic..lets just say pre used) tent ring. And you can never have too much paracord.

No tent is truly freestanding in practical terms. You want the tent to stay where you put it. Freestanding tents need to be secured to something. A camper on the Green did not pay attention to this detail as his freestanding tent was on sand. He went hiking to an overlook over his campsite just in time to see his tent take flight with gear inside and float down the Green River.. Cataract Canyon was a mile downstream. Needless to say he did not make it in time to retrieve it. It snowed that night,.. the jetboat was not coming till the next day.
 
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$600 for that Whelan (essentially two pieces of canvas tarp with some loops sewn to them) seems steep.
Like many here, I too have been looking for the elusive "perfect" canoe tent. I have long wanted a baker, but where and how I'd use it, a baker style tent would be too heavy, needs too many guy lines and is likely a pretty poor performer in high wind situations. The Whelan features the same basic problems as the Baker, but with the added absence of any kind of bug protection. Although I love canvas, and I own several canvas tents, one of the best options I had found for my needs are simple nylon dome tents. They get the job done for three of the four seasons around here, and the fourth season typically falls on a Tuesday when I am at work, so that's not a problem. :cool:
 
I fell in love with the baker shaped shelter from sleeping in ADK leantoos. You can duplicate it with some wall tents with 2 doors by opening up one side to create and awning. Good quality primitive canvas tents of all types are available from Panther Primitives. They make tents for reenacting, so don't expect mosquito netting or floors.
 
I pretty much committed to converting my small wall tent to a year round tent rather than buy a new canvas tent. I'm going to order the front screen with zipper door and new stove jack from Beckel canvas. https://www.beckelcanvas.com/contact-us

I'm going to locate the stove jack on the back right hand corner of the tent. The tent is 64" high (I might have said 54" in the past, that was wrong) and the stove pipe is too close to the area you need to enter the tent comfortably.

In my effort to remove nylon from my outfit, I'm going to make my own canvas waterproof fly (white, to help lighten up the interior). I'm also going to buy/make a floor, probably out of dark green canvas.

I have already removed the stove jack from the front of the tent and I'm slowly removing the thread that holds the exterior stove jack cover from the old stove jack. I plan to make a canvas patch for the hole in the front of the tent with a pair of crossed canoe paddles image there.

IMG_1960.jpg
 
Nice plan to retrofit your tent into an all season bit of gear. Hoping you'll start a new thread to document all the upgrades and modifications you make.
 
we used to live in canvas bell tents in the summer and as long as you have a bunch of those mosquito coils life is not bad.
 
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