The Ultimate Geodesic Dome Build Guide - Most Beautiful, Inexpensive, No Hubs

[Music] thank you [Music] very much foreign hey everybody my name is Johnny Bales and I've been designing and building domes for years now and when I share my stuff online the biggest thing that people asked was where are some plans like I need the instructions because if you look up how to build a geodesic dome online it's a mess it was when I started like seven or eight years ago and it still is now it's crazy for the last two years I've had plans on my website and I've been helping people achieve their own Dome dreams I answer emails every day for people in their own projects and I love doing it this is by far the best most versatile method for building domes it's the least expensive it has the most beautiful joinery it's deceptively simple there's no hubs there's no Hardware you have to buy you can build a dome like this with a greenhouse cover and in any amount of time you can replace that cover with any material you want you can replace it with polycarbonate you can replace it with Plexiglas you can put a real roof on it and turn it into an Airbnb cabin you can't do that with a conduit Dome and you can't do that with a dome with Hub connectors so in this video I'm going to show you my method I'm going to show you all the tips and tricks that I do that I've learned over the years so you don't have to go through all that trial and error just to make an awesome dome right the first time so you can find the plans at trilliumdomes.com all the plans come with a materials list the required tools that are needed rough estimate of the cost and time that go into the project there's various different models um some are smaller and less complicated and others are bigger and a little bit more complicated when I refer to like the numbers and the measurements and stuff like that throughout this process you can find all those measurements and numbers and angles and everything in the plans so the first thing I do is uh cut my stock into manageable pieces look at the plan and find the longest length of any panel you've got and generally you can cut all your struts to that length the shortest strut might be a few inches shorter than that but that's a negligible amount of waste for this Dome that length is roughly four feet I'm gonna do a calculation see how many struts I need cut everything ahead of time at four feet so it's easier to handle I usually choose two by sixes for a 10 to 25 foot Dome because you can get four good sized struts out of it since we're gonna get four struts out of this board we're gonna rip it in half first and then apply our finish and then we'll rip the struts you can use all different sizes of wood this is just what I've come to find seems to be the best domes are great because the lengths are so short that you can reuse reclaimed material I've done that a lot too this is generally what I do when I'm working with brand new Lumber it helps to keep everything straight too because if you're buying two by fours or two by twos they can be really warped coming from the lumber yard I'll rip a couple of long pieces for the doorposts now we'll apply finish to our stock I use a sprayer but a brush or roller works just as well while you're waiting for the Finish to dry you can start working on your jig I'm reusing an old jig but any three-quarter piece of plywood or something similar works just a little bit bigger than the panel that you're gonna make on it it's pretty important that your measurements and marks are really accurate at this stage but no worries it's really simple so let's do it first you want to make a nice straight line for the bottom of your panel uh offset a little bit from The Edge you can use a string line or a level just needs to be straight you're gonna make two marks on that line the distance between those marks is going to be the measurement that's given for the bottom of the panel that you're working on at this point I make a couple of indentations on those marks that I made for the compass that we're about to put together now making the compass is roughly the same thing but you're doing it on a thin piece of wood and you're basically putting two screws into a piece of wood that stick out at the at the length of the side of your panel so the two marks on your jig are the bottom length apart and the two screws in the compass are the side length apart and you'll find that in the plans so take one screw from your compass and put it on your mark on your bottom line in the little indentation that you made and you're gonna scratch an arc with the other screw and then you'll alternate where you put the screw in the other bottom mark inscribe that Arc and then where they meet is your top Point your intersection now you have three marks on your jig two on the bottom and one toward the top in the center which is your vertex so you just want to take a straight edge and connect those three dots and that should be the perfect dimensions of your panel you can flip your jig material over and make a second triangle if your Dome has multiple panels so set the jig aside for now and once the stain is dry you can pull the stock inside and start ripping the bevels take the same angle that you're setting your saw at and mark the middle that board and then it's easier to gauge it from there you want to rip the struts in such a way that you send them both through so you send the first one through cutting the board in half and then the off cut you send through again but you want to cut a little bit more off so that you know they're exactly the same size this is really crucial once I get it where I want it I keep my first strut as the template piece and I don't use that anywhere else and sometimes I'll make a mark on the table saw table itself so I can tell if the fence has migrated [Music] so now you're all set to rip all your struts uh check in as you go is never a bad idea and then you can finish the jig once you've got all your struts cut so to finish the jig you're going to use your strut material that you already have cut so that you're as accurate as possible Pick A straight piece and set it on the line wide side face down and clamp it now take another piece of straight sturdy material and screw it into the jig right up against the strut repeat this step all the way around the jig so that when you push the strut up against your backing board The Edge just barely splits that line so now what we're going to do is basically make a reciprocal butt joint so each intersection one of the struts runs into the next one in a reciprocal fashion fashion so this first cut that you're going to make on all these I call the initial miter and it's just a regular miter these angles are listed in the plans but you can also find them on the jig by using a bevel square or any kind of protractor these are pretty much all going to be symmetrical triangles so there's one angle for the bottom intersections and then another angle for the top intersection at the vertex I'll even find these angles and then cut it out of a piece of plywood so I can quickly set my saw without having to pull out my Square again [Music] so we know that for each of these panels we're going to need two that are cut at the bottom angle and one that are cut at the top angle so since I'm going to cut the bottom angle first I'm going to multiply all the panels that I need by two and set these struts aside you can cut these one by one but I usually use this little gauge that I make to butt the struts up and make multiple Cuts you can also line them up by eye but it's very important that you make the initial cut as close to the end of the board as possible [Music] miters that are the bottom angle you can switch your saw over using your gauge and cut the top angles this part of the process goes pretty quick and when you're done cutting all the initial miters on your struts both the bottom angle and the top angle you can take everything back and line it up on the jig so now that all your initial miters are cut you can take the struts back to your jig and start lining things up the struts are going to overlap each other and look something like this so now we get to the part that can be really intimidating for a lot of people and that's the compound miter cut but really all we're doing is trimming off the excess that's hanging over at the bevel angle as well as the miter angle there's a few ways to do this I'll start with the easiest most beginner friendly and then I'll show you how I do it on the miter saw that's super quick and efficient once you get the hang of it the first thing you're going to want to do is screw everything together and you might want to mark this line that I'm showing right here the first couple ones just to help you out now take a regular old carpenter saw and line yourself up when you're starting the cut just go really slow and hold it up against the face and as you progress a little bit further into the cut the kerf will kind of guide you the rest of the way in and it's really as simple as that you're making a compound cut you're just doing a slight angle with the bevel and you're also doing an angle that's the miter now this technique is pretty chill and doesn't require a lot of equipment but it does take a pretty long time to cut by hand all the struts for over 100 panels so this is the way that I do it and it's a little bit quicker so you already know what the bottom and top angles are of the panel so when you're trimming off the excess you can just look at the plan and see hey I already know what that angle is and set your saw to that but since we're also cutting the bevel angle you're going to want to set the bevel on your miter saw to the bevel angle that you rip the struts at now butt your struts together and Mark it like we did before and since you've already got your saw set up you can pretty much just go cut this line off if your saw doesn't bevel both ways you can still do it with a single bevel miter saw you may just have to flip it upside down this way and that as you're making the different cuts but I have done it before and you make your initial cut and then I set a stop to make sure that I can repeat these Cuts with accuracy [Music] so now you can slide your strut up against your stopping block and make your cut be sure to check as you go every 5 or 10 struts on The Jig to make sure everything's lining up and you can easily adjust your stopping block with a hammer or something like that you'll want to be pretty organized with your struts here and that's why I only work on one panel at a time so each time I'm done with a specific strut I'll put it in its place near the panel and then I'll assemble all the panels and then I'll start working on the struts for the next panel and in the end you'll have three individual struts per triangle and once you have those in their piles and ready to go you can start really putting stuff together now this is pretty self-explanatory I used some pretty beefy screws if I can um and pre-drill if your wood needs it sometimes Woods drier or more prone to split if not I don't bother and if it needs it then I'll give it a little pre-drill a little trick that you can use once you do your first panel is to flip it over and put it back on The Jig and if your triangle is symmetrical then it will fit on there just as snug as when you took it off foreign [Music] now after you've got all your full panels put together there's a couple of special panels that we have to do for the doorway on most Dome designs this one for instance is made of hex panels so you use the bottom of the hex panel and then you measure up these Dimensions to get your half panel once you've made your marks you can basically just lay the strut over your existing jig where it intersects with those lines and then cut out that space for the strut to fit in and then you can start fitting them together because these angles are a little bit different sometimes I put them together and then snip off the ends with a handsaw in the case of the buckyball you're going to make two sets that are mirrored from each other and after cutting all the struts for all the panels and putting them together this is the wood waste from a 20-foot Dome pretty crazy now if you're going to cover the dome in a film a greenhouse film make sure it's UV treated I like to use nine mil woven polythene it's all woven together but it's still clear and works really well you're going to want to put your Dome together in sections before you cover that [Music] as far as putting them together goes it's about as simple as it gets I just clamp and screw them together making sure all edges are as flush as possible if things aren't lining up at this point you may want to go back and make sure that everything is as it should be also refer to the exploded view on the plans diagram that will tell you exactly how many of each section that you need so now we're going to start covering the Dome get your film ready you pull it onto the table and then you set the panels down wide side down that's the outside and then basically you just start stapling around and pulling everything tight this diagram gives you an idea of the order that you want to work in but you really will figure it out as you go you'll get into a flow and it becomes pretty quick the huge advantage to this method is that you can cover everything in the shop before you put it together the cover is very tight and nice looking on the frame and you can later replace and repair sections of material without having to replace or repair the whole cover there is one downside and that's that it creates seams around the whole Dome so for waterproofing we can mitigate this fact by using high quality ceiling tapes silicone and or gasket material when we're putting the Dome together foreign I'll touch briefly on how to attach polycarbonate to the panels I do it a little bit differently now than I did it in this video the basic idea is to use an acrylic double-sided glazing tape attach the polycarbonate to the panel and then trim off the excess on the table saw with a jig what I do a little bit differently now is if I know I'm putting polycarbonate on the Dome I do not stain the edge that's going to go to the outside of the frame so that the acrylic glazing tape sticks even better it already sticks really good I also use a wider and thinner glazing tape so it's about an eighth inch thick and an inch wide I put the glazing tape a little over the outside edge of the panel and then I attached the polycarbonate and trim it flush [Music] this little flush cut jig is really easy to make and it's super useful for not only polycarbonate but if you're going to cover the dome in plywood or interior cladding or anything like that that you want to do in the shop before you put it up it's basically just an L that you clamp to the table saw fence and you put the panel upside down it holds the frame off and allows you to cut whatever it is flush to the frame at the same angle and you can adjust it foreign [Music] there's a few different options you can use for window Hardware but the basic idea is that it's a covered panel over a non-covered panel that has hinges so it can be opened up if it's a greenhouse I usually try to use automatic window openers that are basically a wax piston that opens up when it gets warm and if it you want it to be manually open there's options for little Pistons that will hold the window open and then you can put them on in such a way that when you close the window it also holds them closed honestly there's a lot of different ways to make Windows for domes and it really depends on the application and the use of the dome but if you have any questions about your specific use case I'm happy to work it out with you and I'll definitely leave some links in the description below to some of the window Hardware products that I use in this case it's just a manually opening window so I'm attaching the hinges right here and then I add a little rubber gasket for the window to close on this handle allows you to open and close the window in this little cabinet opener basically keeps it open or closed so the next thing we're going to work on are the tapered base pieces some people can find this part of the process a little tricky but I'll walk you through it step by step different Dome shapes or models have different types of Base pieces for instance the dodecadome has just a straight bevel and the bucky ball has a tapered bevel at the bottom so I'll walk you through the buckyball base section since it's a little bit more complicated so for the buckyball there's a right center and left hand base section the only difference between the right and the left hand section is the orientation of the tapered cut while the center section is a level cut it has a shorter end-to-end length so the first thing I would do is cut all the lengths of these boards for every base section that you need after that you can basically just Mark the height of each side connect it with a line and then rip it down that line with the bevel angle that you need in the correct orientation there's a lot of ways to do this the simplest way is to make a shooter board or to just cut down a straight line with a skill saw that's set at the right angle you can also freehand cut it on the table saw but a lot of people might not be comfortable doing that these days I use a jig to create my tapered Cuts but it's a bit out of the scope of this video to describe how to make one you can absolutely look that up on YouTube though so now you've got your end to ends cut you've got your tapered bevel cut so you just need to cut another piece of pressure treated flat end to end at the same length as those base pieces attach it to the bottom and you're ready to rock and roll [Music] for this particular Dome you can see that I kept the base pieces short and this is a 20 foot Dome so that's to keep the ceiling height not going too high but that gives you the option to adjust the height a little bit on these types of Domes you can also build a bigger vertical wall like three feet tall and put the Dome on top of that if you want more ceiling height [Music] now the last thing we're going to do is cut the door cards these are basically just two pieces of plywood on either side of the doorway that kind of hold everything up in lieu of that missing part of the frame each Dome has a little bit different design as far as the door cards go you can cut the plywood so that it's flush with the outside of the frame or you can have it extend past a little bit which is what I usually like to do to create an awning effect [Music] okay so believe it or not at this point we're ready to put the Dome up so you always want the Dome base to sit on a well-draining gravel pad or a concrete pad or a wooden deck in all the plans I always include specifications for the base and the footprint basically of every Dome so that can Aid you in figuring out exactly how much area you have to level and I'm also happy to provide plans for building a wooden deck if you should need it foreign [Music] once you've got your level pad all squared away then you can start putting together your base pieces the best way to go about putting up the Dome is basically to take the exploded view that's in the plans and go around the perimeter and work your way to the center installing each of those sections as you go and it's always a good idea to take the tape measure and double check and make sure your measurements are good foreign so that's basically it you're just clamping screwing and putting your gasket silicone along the way if you so choose and then once the whole Dome is together you go and tape it off [Music] so you've got a few options when it comes to the door you can build your own which I provide specifications for doing that for each Dome or you can install a pre-hung door which is pretty simple but either way you decide to go that pretty much wraps up the Dome building process I wanted to keep this video really short and sweet and just touch on the really essential confusing Parts related to the Dome frame but like I said I'm answering people's questions all the time so feel free to shoot me an email and I'm happy to talk with you about your project I've also got a ton of cool builds coming up so be sure to like And subscribe and thanks a lot for watching [Music]

Channel: Trillium Domes

Views: 418,436

Keywords: Woodworking, DIY, greenhouse, tiny house, geodesic dome, design, howto, dome, offgrid

Id: Sl9fEp-27EM

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022