Building a backyard fort? Hold off on the tent, large blankets and whatever other ghetto ideas you came up with. Then take a look at the Dome Kit, a modular build-it-yourself system for creating large domes all on your own.
Using precision-cut dowels and adjustable connectors, the setup lets you assemble a large geodesic structure in your backyard without any serious shop skills. The finished products are only skeleton frames, but throw a large swath of fabric over the thing and you can have yourself a large private space with a swanky planetarium-like shape.
Instructions for the Dome Kit are simple: slip the birch dowels onto the connectors and try to get a dome going. Of course, building an actual dome sounds a lot trickier with all of the various parts going on, so it could make for one fun building project (especially with kids involved).   Two types of connectors will be available, either of which can be used. The regular variety will be flexible tubes, which you can use to tie up six dowels at adjustable angles.  They also have a special 3D-printed connector, which uses ball and socket joints for adapting positions.
Two sizes of domes will be available. The smaller one will come with 65 precision-cut dowels and 26 connectors, while the bigger one gets 165 dowels and 61 connectors. The former can fit children and seated adults inside, while the latter can hold full-sized adults standing (unless, of course, you’re an NBA center).
The Dome Kit is currently waiting for backers over at Kickstarter. A $99 pledge will get you one of the smaller models from the first production run.