Chris Palmer's Hat Tent--CP or Folding Information?

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » February 12th, 2010, 5:03 am

Hi all. This is a great forum. Does anyone have the CP or any folding information for Chris Palmer's Hat Tent? I saw it on the documentary 'Between the Folds'. It looks like a cross between the Palmer/Shafer flasher and Palmer's Flower Tower (the bottom point) and it spins when released. Really cool.

redheadorigami · Post by **redheadorigami** » March 12th, 2010, 11:57 pm

thats not the hat tent...

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 13th, 2010, 1:04 am

The model you show on your pictures is not the hat tent, but the improved hat tent or how I called it, the Spinner Hat Tent. I don't think there is a CP for it, I have been trying to reproduce it from the original hat tent without success.

The hat tent CP is in one of Chris Palmer's Cd's and providing it to you would be against copyright laws so don't even ask.

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 16th, 2010, 1:03 am

Finally an INTELLIGENT reply from someone who seems to KNOW what he's talking about. Well it seems to be a hexagonal variant of the octagonal hat-tent with a two-level hexagonal flower tower added on. In any case even you don't seem to know the name for it. The reason I called it hat-tent was because it most resembled that construction and we are instructed to give models a name in this area. Note the similarity:

So you coughed up $33 for the Boxes Collection 1 CD? Is it worth it? I am very hesitant to pay that much just for one model that is only a precursor to the one in question. I too have been trying to reproduce it. So far I have what I would call an "improved" version of the original flasher that has 4-fold symmetry instead of just 2-fold, and my own square variation of the hat-tent. Next I will morph this into an octagonal version and finally into a hexagonal one. Then to add the flower tower. It is actually a lot of fun doing it this way.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 16th, 2010, 1:59 am

Yeah the Cd's are a bit expensive but I am maybe the biggest Chris Plamer fan (check this thread)

A friend and I were discussing the "Improved Hat Tent" on Saturday. I had thought that it was some kind of deformed 6 point star that somehow had been done with what's the flat part of the original model, but my friend made me realise that if it were deformed, it would not wind up into shape when the points are released.

Your idea about it being a hybrid made of a flower tower makes some sense. I'll have to keep trying.

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 16th, 2010, 5:30 pm

Brimstone wrote:Yeah the Cd's are a bit expensive

Yeah and I wrote him, praising the spinner and asking him for the CP, and all I got was a cold reference and a link to his CDs. Though I like some of his work, that didn't exactly enamor me of the person.

Besides, it is much more of a challenge and much more fun to reverse engineer the thing.

I told you I have already created unique if not original variations of the flasher and the hat-tent.

but I am maybe the biggest Chris Plamer fan (check this thread)

Nice thread. So that's YOUR photostream on flickr? I had come across it before when researching this pattern. Very nice.

A friend and I were discussing the "Improved Hat Tent" on Saturday. I had thought that it was some kind of deformed 6 point star that somehow had been done with what's the flat part of the original model, but my friend made me realise that if it were deformed, it would not wind up into shape when the points are released.

Well I think the flower tower is an off-shoot of Eric Gjerde's star-twist pattern don't you? Though I don't know which came first.

Your idea about it being a hybrid made of a flower tower makes some sense. I'll have to keep trying.

Please keep me posted.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 17th, 2010, 1:46 am

foobaz wrote:Well I think the flower tower is an off-shoot of Eric Gjerde's star-twist pattern don't you? Though I don't know which came first.

Eric's start twist was originally created by Fujimoto whom Chris Palmer studied with and whom he calls "my master".

Now that I look at it again I doubt the Fujimoto Star is what Chris put on the flat part of the Hat tent, I see no protuberance on the Star and the spinner really needs to be protuberant, or am I missing something?

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 17th, 2010, 3:07 am

Brimstone wrote:Eric's start twist was originally created by Fujimoto whom Chris Palmer studied with and whom he calls "my master".

Where did you find that? I couldn't find much at all about this guy.

Now that I look at it again I doubt the Fujimoto Star is what Chris put on the flat part of the Hat tent, I see no protuberance on the Star and the spinner really needs to be protuberant, or am I missing something?

Well, my square "hat-tent" has a flat square in the middle and it spins quite nicely.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 17th, 2010, 4:08 am

foobaz wrote:
Brimstone wrote:Eric's start twist was originally created by Fujimoto whom Chris Palmer studied with and whom he calls "my master".
Where did you find that? I couldn't find much at all about this guy.

I have no idea, I guess random comments on the internet

foobaz wrote:
Now that I look at it again I doubt the Fujimoto Star is what Chris put on the flat part of the Hat tent, I see no protuberance on the Star and the spinner really needs to be protuberant, or am I missing something?
Well, my square "hat-tent" has a flat square in the middle and it spins quite nicely.

A flat square? And it spins? I don't get it. Could you please show me?

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 17th, 2010, 4:19 am

foobaz wrote:Well, my square "hat-tent" has a flat square in the middle and it spins quite nicely.

A flat square? And it spins? I don't get it. Could you please show me?

Well I'll give you a hint for now since I'm still at the beginning stages. It's a flat square but it can be creased in a way that makes it point downward just enough to create a tip for spinning. In fact, it just occurred to me, you could do the same thing to the octagon in the middle of the hat-tent.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 18th, 2010, 12:54 am

foobaz wrote:Well I'll give you a hint for now since I'm still at the beginning stages. It's a flat square but it can be creased in a way that makes it point downward just enough to create a tip for spinning. In fact, it just occurred to me, you could do the same thing to the octagon in the middle of the hat-tent.

I already tried that, but the protuberance wasn't much

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 18th, 2010, 3:22 am

Brimstone wrote:I already tried that, but the protuberance wasn't much

Well it's not much in my case either. Maybe 1/32". One thing I'll say though is I am a meticulous folder so the whole thing is very well balanced.

EricGjerde · Post by **EricGjerde** » March 18th, 2010, 6:33 pm

Hi there,

a couple of clarifications:

1.) Chris folded his stuff long before I was doing origami; he's been doing tessellations for at least 15 years, and is definitely the technical master of the field.

2.) nothing that I have is based on Fujimoto, as unfortunately I had no access to his work or any information about him until recently. A minor detail, but one which still makes me kind of sad, as having some good reference material when I started would have been helpful.

3.) likewise I haven't based anything on Chris' work, for the same reason as #2- however the little bit of material I saw when I was first started out was very inspiring to me. It showed some of the possibilities of how far you could take this kind of work.

Chris spent a month out here in Minneapolis, and we did a lot of talking and some folding- it was a great time! It's interesting because we have very different ideas about artwork and approaches to tessellations and related works, so it created a lot of good energy to bounce ideas off each other and look at things from the other's perspective. I learned a lot about him and it definitely helped me to understand his work in a larger context.

I don't have any instructions for these things, and Chris is usually pretty busy so I don't know if an email is going to get the result you want- but then again he does this stuff for a living, so asking for free things from someone who is trying to make a living from his origami work really doesn't go over so well.

You might try looking for the diagrams for previous models in the BARF archives, from Jeremy Shafer? it might still be rolling around there somewhere.

A polite request to Chris about making this pattern available for purchase might meet with better results, though- if he has the time he might consider it? You'll have to give it a try and see.

He had some of these with him and they were pretty cool :)

-Eric Gjerde

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » March 19th, 2010, 3:07 am

Thanks Eric, what you said about the request to make it commercially available makes sense.

foobaz · Post by **foobaz** » March 22nd, 2010, 8:43 pm

OK Brimstone, here's a video of my latest iteration of the square flasher-spinner on YouTube:

Direct Youtube link

Here is a video of the next phase, an octagonal flasher-spinner:

Direct Youtube link

Here's a hexagonal spinner:

Direct Youtube link

This one spins for 15 seconds:

Direct Youtube link

Here's the latest octagonal spinner that goes for 20 seconds:

Direct Youtube link

Here is a pentagonal spinner just for fun:

Direct Youtube link

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