Dome Sweet Dome

Materials

Tubular! Make tubes from three sheets of newspaper & a dowel rod or broom handle

Tip: Dowel rods will help you make stronger less flexible/floppy tubes which will provide better support for your dome.

Secure the final tip with masking tape so your tube doesn’t unroll

Slide it off the handle or rod

Make 64 more (Tip: Put them in stacks of five -- it’s easier to keep track of how many you have and how many to go.)

Time to Trim—35 ‘longs’ and 30 ‘shorts’

Make one of the right size, ex. 26 in for the ‘long’ or 24 in for the ‘short’ for full size dome and use it as a trim guide for the rest.

Longs and Shorts

Trim all the longs and shorts. Keep them separated!

Tip! Mark them as longs and shorts somehow, ex. with two different kinds of colored tape, or other method of differentiating. It will make it much easier during construction!

Lay out your decagon (10 sided shape) using all longs

Join ends with masking tape or staples to build the base of the dome

Tape a long and a short to each joint of the dome. Two longs face each other followed by two shorts, and so on.

Tape the tops of the two adjacent shorts to make a triangle. Tape the next two longs together, and so on…all the way around.

Connect the tops of the high and low triangles with a row of shorts. The dome will start to curve inward.

At each joint where four shorts come together, tape another short sticking straight up.

Connect each short sticking straight up to the joints on either side with longs, forming new triangles.

Connect the tops of the triangles of the second row (the new triangles just made) with a row of longs.

Finally, add the last five shorts so that they meet at a single point in the center of the dome.

You can cover the triangles with paper if you wish to enclose the dome.