Making 20mm Tepees

I thought I'd have a go at making some Tepees today as I had an idea and had to test it out.

I watched some really useful films on YouTube and my process wasn't too far away from how the real things are put together.

I started with three thick brush bristles to make the tripod. Onto this was placed around eight skeleton poles, these are thinner bristles. One laid on top of the other as they go around. Two skeleton poles between the thicker tripod ones.

I then put some UHU glue on the poles and wrapped a wet wipe around it. I had dried these out first.

Pitching it underneath pulled the fabric taught on the poles.

Then I cut off the access once the glue had dried.

After I used some more glue to just stick down the bottom of the fabric. These was good because it makes the fabric go up between the poles and looks very realistic.

I then cut up some more bristles and cut them into thin segments. I then used super glue to stick these on above the door. These become the sticks used to peg the Tippee together.

Sprayed with brown paint and left to dry.

I struggled a bit to find good Tepee designs and ended up using a comic about the Little Bighorn battle for pattern references.

After I had copied a couple I suddenly grew more confident and started making up my own. Using the pictures as guides to shapes and colours.

Some of these are better than others, it's better not to have the knot so high so more sticks show.

The smoke flaps were the trickiest bit, but once the fabric was on, more pieces can be added to make the vents. I washed the whole Tepee in watered down PVA to make it a tougher model. I wanted these things to be tough so spent extra time with the hot glue when constructing them.

Buffalo hide colour with various colour patterns on top.

These were made for my 20mm collection but they look good for 28mm too.

The door was make from cereal card covered in the wet wipe fabric. Cut to shape and stuck on to the model.

I used 60mm round bases to construct the frame.

I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying watered down PVA glue on the fabric.

This picture was very useful for reference.