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turtlelady's Bamboo Stand
My portable hammock stand is still in development mode. It is made with low tech skills and cheap materials. It is lightweight and small in mass. Here are some photos of it in use in the last few months.
It is made from locally harvested bamboo in Kentucky. The poles are 3/4 - 1" in diameter and up to 66" long. They were not "properly" cured. Two of the first ones I used split most of their length. I taped them and they continued to function until I replaced them. Now I taped the ends of all the poles pre-emptively. So far they have not split.
The tripods are made with simple lashing. A chain link fence top rail has been cut into three pieces to make the ridgeline, using one connector piece. The top rail was a dinged one, and cost just under $5.00. The connector was $1.88. The ridgeline rail hangs from the lashings with a cord loop.
A prussic knot and toggle are used to connect the hammock to the top rail, not the tripods. This makes a compressive force that holds the sections together. The tripods each hold only 1/2 my weight with a downward force.
Limiter cords are connected to the lower part of the tripod legs to limit their spread. A shock cord is taped midway down one leg of each tripod with a shower curtain ring to draw up the limiter cords under tension when the legs are gathered closed for bundling, to prevent tangling. 4" squares of rubber shelf liner stuff under the legs protects smooth wood, laminate or tile floors and helps stablize them.
The bundle of six bamboo poles and top rail weighs 15 pounds and is 5" in diameter.
I am 5' 8" tall and weigh 185 lbs. This stand system has not dropped me yet. It is fairly low to the ground. I lower my self gently into it, gingerly testing the system each time. It feels amazingly stable once it is weighted.
I welcome your questions and suggestions for evolution.
The photos show the stand in actual situations where I have set up for overnight stays without moving any furniture ( other than a floor lamp once so that I could read without using my headlamp.) The tripod legs fit in among and over stuff amazingly well.
BTW -- the photos show Mac's IX 5-in-1 Jerry chair underquilt with cordura shell. This bundles the hammock, topquilt and stand together nicely. The hammock shown is a Trek Light with a 9'2" rail for indoor use . I use a slightly longer ridgeline rail when I use my Switchback for an outdoor camp, by changing out the shorter section of rail.
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Recent adjustments to my bamboo stand
I made several minor adjustments to my bamboo stand that made it easier to use in several ways. It served remarkably well this weekend in a motel room. The adjustments were:
- replacing the shortest two of the three sections of chain link fence top rail with one longer one. This eliminated the extra connector and bulk in the storage bag.
- using small cord (pink in the photos) to hold open the para cord loop the rail hangs from, and to keep the loop in place during transport yet hang free to self-adjust when weighted.
- replaced toggles with shorter, fatter toggles made from dowel rod.
- retied the spread limiter cords higher up the legs where they are shorter thus eliminating the shock cord and ring I used previously to tension these for transporting. Now hey do not tangle around the ends of the poles.
These four changes makes the stand much easier to set up. Eliminating the one section of pipe and connector from the storage bag made me able to position the stand much more conveniently in my car's back seat. Now two people can ride back there if needed. That unplanned improvement was a super gift!
Other changes:
I relashed the poles (green cord in photos) higher up the pole ends to raise the hammock to a more comfortable height. Yippee!
I put some wraps of gorilla tape under the lashings on each pole to keep the lashings from sliding down the pole. This works but I want a better solution for this tendency of the lashings to slide on the smooth bamboo.
I replaced all my colorful duct tape menagerie with black gorilla tape.
I decided to use the gorilla tape to bind up one of the black bamboo poles that had split and I had taken out of the system. The walls of this pole were much thicker than the any of the replacement poles I had. I wanted to see if it would work even though it was split the entire length of the pole. It appears to work well. You can see that pole in one of the photos -- it has tape every 9".
I decided to go with all black bamboo poles even though some of them were smaller in diameter than the yellow bamboo poles in my collection. In inventorying my stash of bamboo poles, I discovered that the black bamboo poles were consistently thicker walled than the yellow bamboo poles.
This weekend I spent some time pondering what to put over the ends of the bamboo poles to eliminate moisture getting in. I decided maybe the fingers cut from rubber gloves may work well. The tops of the poles could do with thick latex gloves, but I want thicker rubber gloves for the ground end.
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Tweaking: New hang loop much better
I eliminated the loop that hung off the lashings to support the top rail. Now I have a tripled loop of cord around the bamboo legs themselves, several inches below the pipe.
I used a bowline on a coil knot so that these cords can self adjust as needed when loaded. A clove hitch holds the coil in place when the stand is collapsed.
The pink bindings slide along the coil and indicate the path the pipe should go through the tripod for set up. Usually I am tired when I am setting up for the night, so these organizers help me a lot.
When everything is properly positioned and the hammock weighted, the pipe does not rub against any of the legs. If the legs of the stand were a bit longer, this area could be more spacious.
Next I plan to drill a hole through the connection point of the top rail, to drop a pin through to eliminate separation during set up. While hanging the compression keeps it together.
BTW, I am stoked that Professor Hammock and others have referenced my stand !
They were not "properly" cured
how do i properly cure bamboo to try this at home?