After seeing GrizzlyAdams DIY Bridge hammock in the summer at Loch Ken, I was determined to have a go myself, it would also utilise some of the innovative suspension systems that have been discussed recently.
Because this is just a test piece I didn't want to buy any additional material, just use what was to hand. I had some ripstop, which although slightly stiff and crackly (kite or sail material I think) and bright blue it would suffice.
I used information that Grizz kindly sent me to draw up the design;
Because it was a symmetrical design, I folded the material before laying the design out, I used a long piece of plastic tubing to get the curve, not perfect but close enough, and cut it out, btw first score to the hammock, those circular cutters are efficient, but they are very sharp.
Now the bit I was dreading, the sewing, I bought the machine over a year ago, made a couple of stuff sacks, and its been gathering dust ever since.
I had to reread the manual just to remember how to do the simple things, I also did a lot of searching here and using google to get a better understanding on folds, stitches to use and tension. The ripstop sat there for about a month, before this weekend I decided to get it done.
Surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I feared, the hardest part was getting the ripstop to stay folded, I ended up ironing it, which was a serious pain and took four times longer to do than the actual sewing.
I used some very strong 25mm wide webbing I had, to create loops at each corner, 250mm long doubled over, to give me a minimum of 100mm to sew in.
I knew there would be strong stresses local to each corner, and looking at the corners while I am in the hammock, it will as I thought need reinforcing, or a different method of spreading the load.
The suspension system;
I had had a set of UCR’s made from a ships chandlers and wanted to use them, tree huggers as usual , but I wanted to try the “Marlinspike hitch”. So how to tie the hammock to the UCR’s, the UCR’s as per normal would use the Marlinspike hitch to attach to the tree huggers.
In the end I kept it simple, use another set of toggles, larks head those to the suspension triangle from the hammock;
The complete set-up;
Interesting experiment, I learned quite a lot from it;
Sewing long straight lines isn’t easy, being one of them !
I want to say thank you very much to Grizz for freely giving information and dimensions for his Bridge hammock.
Next, buying the expensive material, and I’m already thinking a down underblanket can’t be THAT hard……..can it ?
Cheers
Stephen
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