http://www.chaosreigns.com/gallery/20140809_194836.jpg.html
I feel like photos of hexayurt latches are problematically difficult to find. Meaning of horizontally vs. vertically hinged seems to be inconsistently defined. By vertically hinged, I mean the hinge is at the top, and the thing moves vertically. So it shuts itself. Also, gravity happens to be oriented most conveniently for this latch. Because the door is beveled (15 degrees) so it will only open outward, a latch is only needed to keep the door from opening outward. The latch is a block of scrap wood, in a sleeve of tape at the bottom of the door. More tape is used to keep the inside of the tape from being sticky, and allowing the wood to freely slide up and down. I drilled a hole horizontally through the block of wood, so I could tie paracord through it while letting it lay as flat as possible. From there, the paracord goes up, and through a hole in the door. A knot on the outside holds it in place. When the paracord is pulled from the outside, the block slides up, unlatching the door. The tape sleeve is high enough that if, for some reason, the knot on the outside fails, and the block slides down, the door will not be held shut. I really wanted a regular drinking straw to line the hole through the door, I think it would've been perfect. Instead, based on my girlfriend's idea, I basically made a straw out of tape. Then cut it in four evenly spaced places on both sides of the door, splayed it out, and taped the ends down. Not sure how necessary this was, but being the only part of the foam not covered in tape bothered me. The hole through the door is in the door's center (on the front). It's angled at 45 degrees, to reduce the angle the string needs to rotate into the door, in hopes of reducing friction. I wouldn't expect a paint stirring stick to work for this method, potentially being too light to overcome the friction of the paracord through the hole. To make it work, you could maybe... make a loop of paracord, attached to the top of the paint stirrer, and running through the door at the middle and bottom. On the outside of the door, if you move the cord up, it latches the door, and if you move it down, it unlatches the door. But I didn't have a paint stirrer, and I had a block of wood. I ended up removing the core of my paracord to get it through the hole I made too small. I was inspired by the description of a latch for a horizontally hinged door here: http://www.domerama.com/types-of-domes/hexayurts/hexayurt-construction/ It's more complicated, requiring something for the latch to pivot on. I put my yurt on a truck to BRC yesterday, woo. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
