For a comfortably-sized teepee, you’ll want a piece of canvas roughly 15 x 30 feet.
The easiest way to acquire these poles is to buy them commercially. Felling wood is also an option, but you need to make sure that you’re harvesting legal wood, which can be a tricky proposition. To be safe, buy them from a dealer to ensure that they’re sturdy and legal. To prepare the poles for use, smooth out any rough patches with a pocketknife and sandpaper, and treat it with a coat of a 50/50 mixture of linseed oil and turpentine. This will ensure that your poles will be protected against the elements and will last for many years.
It’s also good to have about 12-15 stakes for staking the bottom of the canvas to the ground, as well as the materials to make a fire. If you want an authentic teepee, get some porcupine quills or other long pins to fix the open part of the canvas covering when you assemble it.
For an accurate measurement, lay out the canvas and assemble the poles on top. With the tops of the two base poles in the center of the canvas, pointing toward the center of the flat side, lay the other pole on top of it so the end on the curved side of the semicircle is about a 1/3 of the way down from the edge. That should be roughly a 30 degree angle.
At this point, it should look more like a bipod. When it reaches its apex, separate the two base poles that were next to each other roughly 9 feet (2. 7 m) from one another. They will be the “back” corners of the teepee, while the crossing pole will be the “door pole. " It should not be, strictly speaking, symmetrical, but more of an isosceles triangle. The back corner poles should act as a cradle for the door pole, with about a foot more space from each corner pole to the door pole than between each corner pole. Make sure all the corners of the tripod are sturdy by pulling down on the rope while standing in the center of the tripod, directly under the joining point.
Leave space for the lift pole in the center of the back side of the teepee. There should be four poles on that side, with a gap in the middle for the lift pole. This will be used later to put the cover on the teepee. Steadying each pole at the base with your foot in an arcing line with the corner poles and door pole, gently let the top of the pole come to rest in the V created by both of the corner poles. The distance between all the poles, evenly spaced, should be about 3 feet (0. 9 m).
It’s important to tie the canvas very tightly to the lift pole. If the life pole flap slips even a couple of inches, the canvas will wrinkle and cause the teepee to be uneven and loose, losing some of its valuable heat benefits. To be sure it doesn’t slip, hammer an inch-long tack through the knot and the lift pole flap.
Raise the entire bundle in the air and place it into the gap you’ve left on the back wall of the teepee for the lift pole.
Porcupine quills can work, and were used traditionally, but small wooden pins are a more durable and available choice. They’re available anywhere that also retails lodge pole pine poles. You don’t need to use quills if you prefer not to.
If you want to have a fire in your teepee, you’ll need to open the smoke flaps or you’ll hotbox the teepee and risk a fire. Plant stakes on the door-side of the teepee to fix the ropes to when you’ve opened them, to keep them from flapping back closed while your fire is lit. Be very careful if you want to start a fire during cold weather. It’ll be a great source of heat, and your tent will be toasty in no time, but make sure it’s centrally placed, under the smoke flaps, and keep active watch on it at all times.
