Fairly new to the forums here and thought I'd post my first hammock stand and hammock.

The hammock stand was inspired by this thread: https://www.hammockforums.net/forum/...Hammock-Stand)

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The stand consists of 8' 2x4. The base and the long uprights are basically the full length with the ends mitered at 30 degrees. The long members are bolted to the two base beams with 1/2" carriage bolts with washers and wing nuts for easy disassembly. The shorter support members are about 5' long, mitered at 60 degress, with short 2x4 segments screwed to the ends so they can be bolted to the long uprights. The support members are bolted to both the long uprights and the base beams with 3/8" carriage bolts also with washers and wing nuts. The legs are just a 8' 2x4 cut in half with some scrap pieces screwed on so that the whole upright portion just rests on them (you can sort of see this in the background of the picture below). The eye bolts on the long members are 1/2" x 6" zinc plated and rated at 300 pounds (this is the largest / strongest ones I could find at Home Depot but they seem to do the job just fine) and attached with a washer at each end (so the eye isn't right up against the wood) and a hex bolt and locking washer at the threaded end to keep them tight and in place.

Basically the whole thing should just come apart into a pile of 2x4 beams for storage. I figure it will take around 10 minutes for assembly / disassembly. Since even disassembled the whole thing is still nearly 8 feet long it's not really intended to be that portable, just to act as my hanging place at home for trying out hammocks. Fully assembled the contraption is about 7' tall at the top of the long uprights and 15' end to end so I should be able to hang just about any size hammock I could possibly find / make. I plan to add some lower attachment points so a smaller hammock isn't so high off the ground you can't get into it and maybe some more attachment points at the top for a tarp. I don't have any guy lines run but it didn't feel like there were any issues with stability when I tested it last night though there is a few inches of side-to-side play at the very end of the long members. While I didn't figure out how much this beast weighs, and it's not light-weight to be sure, it's not so heavy that it can't be managed by one person without too much trouble.



The hammock is a VERY basic no-sew, made from 12' of 60" 1.9 ripstop, with the ends gathered and tied to doubled-over 1-inch webbing with a double sheet-bend to form a webbing loop at each end of the hammock which is attached to cinch buckles so I can run strapping from the stand (or tree) to the hammock and have some adjustability. I don't have appropriate cordage yet so this the only way I could get this going, and still be adjustable, yesterday. I definitely plan on sewing this thing at some point and eventually it will become a stretch-side hammock ala Knotty.

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You can see my middle son briefly enjoying the fruits of my labor yesterday. In the foreground you can also see my ugly knot, unhemmed end, and the cinch buckle. Since I'm planning on trying it out this weekend for a night I needed to get it going in a hurry and, unfortunately, I haven't been able to get any time on my mother in laws sewing machine to do any thread work, I plan to just leave it this way and see how it goes. Hopefully the ends don't completely unravel on me between now and when I can get around to sewing it. If I'm lucky, and those sheet bends don't bind too much on me, I'll have some amsteel blue arrive this week and can replace the webbing at the end of the hammock with some continuous loops but maybe I'll just stick with what I've got for this weekend since so far it seems to do the job just fine.


I know those pictures might be a little hard to see since it was after dark by the time I got everything ready so if anyone's interested I'll try to take some more, with close-ups, when I can get some time during daylight hours.