Forester's Tent Part 1

"CAMPCRAFT: 3. TRAIL EQUIPMENT III: Make and use a sleeping bag or a tent suitable for your climate...." - R4LA Rover Ranger Award Requirements

 Our Chief Rover Scout encouraged me to pick up a copy of the 1946 edition of the Explorer Scout Manual. It's a fantastic reference for outdoorsmanship, and tells you just about everything you need to know about building a backpacking kit from scratch.

In "Chapter 3: Shelter Equipment," it references several kinds of tents a scout can build, and the one that interested me the most was the Forester's Tent. It has this to say about it:

"It's a good 'cold weather' tent, having an open front facing the fire, yet with flaps if desired. It is cut from a flat rectangle of canvas. The pointed hood, which is optional, gives added protection from rain and gathers and holds heat from a reflector fire."

Unfortunately, compared to the other tent designs in the book, it goes into little detail on how to lay it out.

Explorer Scout manual illustration of the Forester's
Tent. No detail of how to actually build it.

At first I thought the "floor plan" was the plan for the tent, and I jumped through mental hoops trying to figure out the width based on the measurements in the book. Presumably this was measured out for two full-grown men, whereas I was looking to build a single person tent.

After working my motherhood-fried brain with rusty math for awhile, I thought forget this, let's start the measurements from scrap. So I backward-engineered this tent from the illustrations for 1 person.

I decided to work from a 12:1 in-ft ratio when drawing out the tent, so 1" on paper = 1' in reality. In the beginning I didn't account for seam-width or what not, because I was simply trying to get the shape down.

Final layout of tent. Door flaps not in this
illustration.

I went through four different layout versions before landing on Version 5 of the Forester's tent layout. Though I did draw out a floor for this version, I'm not planning on adding it (at least not now), as I plan on this being an open-floor tent for the sake of weight. I ended up doing some origami with this when printing and cutting out a model, and it turned out elegant.

One thing I couldn't understand from the book illustrations was the tent door, so I figured it must be a detachable thing. Also, I don't know if the book intended there to be a closed flap at the foot of the tent, but I added it anyway.

Above you can see the several paper models I created, and the right one is the final model. I created a cloth model with skewers to get an idea of the tent set-up.

Pattern for Forester's Tent V.5

I've laid out a pattern for the Forester's Tent. In the pattern I added 1" to the edges to account for the seams, which will be a  1/2" full flat-felled seam. This baby ain't going to fall apart any time soon! I also added an additional panel for the inside of the hood and rear flaps; I may add one for the door as well (it's not shown on the pattern here). I will be using a mid-weight water-proof rip-stop fabric for this build. This accounts for 59/61 in width for 7 yards of fabric (to be on the safe side).

The "floor" space in this tent will be 7 ft long, with a little extra under the hood. The front width is about 4 ft, and the foot width just under 3 ft across. It should be enough room to cram me and my backpack inside.

Why this tent? Well, it's a traditional scouting tent, firstly. I like the idea of being able to trap and funnel heat from a fire. When cut out and sewn together, it might weigh 3 lbs excluding any metal stakes, so it'll be a nice light-weight backpacking tent. I like the look of it. The qualification for the Rover Ranger is also a huge motivator for me!

Anyone reading this is welcome to use the measurements and pattern shown here! If you do create something out of it, please let me know! Look for a Part 2 of this when I actually get into cutting out and sewing this tent together.