first run of my DIY cuben hammock tarp with doors!

[WebsterJ]

Awesome looking tarp. Great job.

[NickR]

Great looking tarp. Maybe one day I will decide to take the plunge on a Cuben Tarp, but for now I'm working on a Silnylon tarp. I would love a copy of your AutoCAD drawing. I use AutoCAD for my job as well.

[TinCanFury]

NickR, PM me an email I can send it to

[G.G.]

Looks fantastic. Great work.

When you're ready to dabble again and take an order, let me know.

[joker421]

Really nice looking tarp! I'm definitely interested in attempting this project at some point. Are you concerned at all about the long-term durability of the loops of the 1.5oz cuben you're using at the guy-out points and RL corners? I don't have an idea for doing it differently, just curious if you see that as a potential weak point. This may be how everyone does it, I've never actually seen a cuben tarp in real life

Also, how many yards of each weight of cuben did you end up using for this build?

I'd love a copy of the dimensioned PDF you offered earlier (I'm no good at AutoCAD). PM incoming...

[jlink79]

Looking at your ridgeline pullouts it looks like a larkshead at the linelock and a wasp on the line. Do the linelocks not hold tight enough. I would have thought you use a dutch hook to wrap the tree and then pull tight at the linelock.
Also who are you sourcing your cuben from?

[gunner76]

Check out this link for info on bonding agents for Cuben Fiber....http://www.suluk46.com/RandD%20-%20R...t%20Tests.html

[TinCanFury]

Really nice looking tarp! I'm definitely interested in attempting this project at some point. Are you concerned at all about the long-term durability of the loops of the 1.5oz cuben you're using at the guy-out points and RL corners? I don't have an idea for doing it differently, just curious if you see that as a potential weak point. This may be how everyone does it, I've never actually seen a cuben tarp in real life

Also, how many yards of each weight of cuben did you end up using for this build?

I'd love a copy of the dimensioned PDF you offered earlier (I'm no good at AutoCAD). PM incoming...

I doubled up on the loops by taping a 1/2" strip along the back side as well, about twice as long as the loop length. This should give enough strength to the loop. For the ridgeline it's fine, most of the force is along the direction of the cuben. For the corner/edge tie outs it probably won't withstand a lot of force the further from the base angle it's at, but if pitched properly, I don't see much force pulling it off that angle, even in high wind (or should I say, in a conversation about it at the bar with a backpacking friend who happens to be getting her PhD in mechanical engineering and doing her thesis on material strengths). The operative part of that summary being "pitched properly". I think one thing I would do, in making it again, is to shorten that loop to just enough length to go around the lineloc, this would minimize off-angle forces on the cuben from the lineloc, transferring those angles to the cord even more so than the cuben.

That said, from what I've seen of others that use a similar method, they actually use a longer cuben "loop" to the lineloc, but they may also be banking on "pitched properly" as well?

I used less than a yard of the 1.5oz. I bought 3yd of it to make these tie outs for the two tarps I've been working on, as well as to make "bear bag" and some various other small things, I've used less than a yard overall so far. It helps to think ahead to get as many cuts out of an area as possible. For the 0.5, this hammock requires 25'-10" of the material, with some "waste" at both ends to make the angle cut for the doors. The extra material can be used to make a number of stuff sacks. gunner76 posted a good writeup on those.

PDF should be in your inbox.

Looking at your ridgeline pullouts it looks like a larkshead at the linelock and a wasp on the line. Do the linelocks not hold tight enough. I would have thought you use a dutch hook to wrap the tree and then pull tight at the linelock.
Also who are you sourcing your cuben from?

Yea, i had those from my previous tarps, and since this was a test run of sorts, I just quickly threw them on. I wasn't sure if the line from the Dutch kit would hold in the lin loc 3's due to their diameter, so I put them on like that. I like the weight of that system vs the thicker cord used elsewhere but didn't want to test that at the same time. It would be easier to use more of Lawson's glowire for the tie outs and use the line loc 3's to pull tight. Best I can tell I don't have any reason to believe the line loc's would not be able to hold tight enough on the glowire.

That said, in hindsight, what I should probably have done was put a 1/2" Beastee-D at the ridgeline ends instead, then tie a line loc 3 to the end of that with some strong cord of some sort (I saw a photo of this setup that someone else here had done, but forget who/which thread I saw it in). This would have let me also easily pitch one side with a hiking pole tip into the Beasee-D hole and then tied out to the ground. I came up with a method to do this with an "add on piece", but they weight more (for the time being).

I purchased the green "used" from a guy off this forum actually, enough to make my tarp and a ground tarp for my friend (my first cuben made tarp), and the rest straight from Cubic Tech.

My thoughts on, and sourcing for, taping I posted here (same thread as gunners cuben stuff sack thread mentioned above).

Check out this link for info on bonding agents for Cuben Fiber....http://www.suluk46.com/RandD%20-%20R...t%20Tests.html

This came up in a BPL thread, where Suluk took offense so I don't want to open that can again here, but I'm not a huge fan of those tests overall. They're good information, yes, but don't look to them as the final word in the subject. My one big warning that I will bring up here is that sewing cuben inherently will affect the materials strength, and nothing you do after sewing will make up for the damage you've done to the material (short of taping reinforcing cuben around the sewn section). I received a sewn stuff sack with a gear swap purchase I made a few years ago and the material around the sewing finally was coming apart enough that I had to get rid of it. Sewing for tie outs is definitely strong when done correctly, and does allow for the attachment of gosgrain. I also ended up using sewing for the tie outs on the first tarp I made, which also used a variation on the cuben loop for the tie out line locs, because I used a different method to make the tie outs that proved to be too weak and so was fixed with the use of a thread injector. However, because of the inherent damage done to the material, as Suluk shows in his tests, my personal opinion is that the use of tape and the appropriate sized "patch' area of cuben material as needed, is a much better method. I also believe that a ridgeline should not have a thread injector anywhere near it, and not just for avoiding water penetration. I think a lot of fear as to the bond strength of cuben tape early on has been answered by now, and the only real remaining question is the long term durability of the tape, which may not be as much of a concern when you consider that if the tape does lose bond strength in, say, 5 years, you can always then replace the tape with new.