Part 2 of my Hubs kit building and I’m ready to assemble a geodesic dome.
At the end of my last session cutting out all of the beams for the dome I had a pile of long and short wooden poles.
I varnished these all with an exterior wood paint and once dry (around an hour) I screwed all of the joints into the ends. I used a 2.5mm pilot drill beforehand.
The Hubs kit has a fantastic fold-out page that clearly takes you through all of the building steps.
The stick end joints are quite tough to push into the hubs, you might need some help at this point. Also, it’s a good idea to wear gloves.
Do read the instructions fully before assembling as there are some care points. It tells you where to stand and how to lift it, you could get this wrong and build something strange or worse still break a hub.
the next layer starts to give shape by the third round the dome appears nearly ready to lift to the next level me assembling the dome
Building the dome really brought happiness. There is something about the whole process that is really great and very rewarding. As the dome takes shape it gets a level of form and hence stiffness, even at this point when the hubs are not locked. As you will see later, once these are locked it takes on another dimension.
This is a 1.3m diameter dome and so stands 0.65m high. Doesn’t sound like much, but the domw is quite substantial. I can still lift it and move it around though. The next challenge is to build the base structure as this is a dome that forms just the roof of the greenhouse.