My attempt at a sleeping bag underquilt

**uneekwahn** · 06-03-2011, 02:46

The wife and I woke this morning and found that our RCD had died overnight, so one of us had to stay home. Seeing as my wife is nearly 26 weeks pregnant and will be taking a year off once she pops I decided I'd take a day off to play "see which electrician will actually turn up", but I digress.

After the sparky had done his thing and put in a new RCD, I decided to start playing with the cheap ($59AU) sleeping bag I'd purchased last night to use as an UQ.

It's a 190cmx75cm bag with a filling of "hollow fibre 200g/sm" and is rated for +6c (~43f for those who grew up with a strange system of measurement!) and weighs in at 1.2kg (I'm not a gram weenie

). It's also has two pretty shades of blue!

Don't laugh at my "test bed" so to speak. The bag is just tied on with some paracord and other rope I had handy so I could get an idea of what it would look like.

The biggest issue I can see is that the tie out points on my HH are going to be stuck under the UQ. I was thinking of putting some grommets in where the tie out points would be and running them through them. Any other suggestions?

I've also got to lower the head end a little bit so it's lower down and covers my feet just a little bit more.

Next is to make some triangles, probably out of amsteel as I've got 100ft of it sitting here from the group buy

Obligatory photos:

**fred1diver** · 06-03-2011, 03:35

that's a great start, if I might just make a suggestion, move it lower on the hammock body, it will keep you warmer

are you going to use it only as a UQ or you want to keep it as a regular sleeping bag as well

if you will only be using it as a UQ maybe cut it a bit narrower, that way you wont have to put grommets in (and reduce the weight at the same time)
if you have a thread injector you could sew channels on either side to pass the suspension
good luck on your project and the project you and your wife are having as well

one quick question what is an RCD

**uneekwahn** · 06-03-2011, 04:11

Yeah, I will be lowering it, I just had limited resources available today to do any better

This was just an attempt and seeing how it would look!

I'll really only be using it for an underquilt. I don't want to do any major work on the sleeping bag, so I'll just be putting loops on it an using triangles to hold it on to the ridgeline.

An RCD is like a circuit breaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device

Cheers,

Jason.

**Browny** · 06-03-2011, 05:12

Have thread injector, and quick unpick, and shock cord, and a complete disregard for others property, let the destruction begin!

Yes, we are DIY'ing this thing at my place. Just gotta figure out where to hang two hammocks in my yard.

(Is it still DIY if I do half the work? D.I.Yourselves maybe?)

Sector eleventy seven secure...................ish

**uneekwahn** · 06-03-2011, 05:15

I'll bring my hammock stand on Sunday

quick edit: I'll also bring a limited edition bottle of James Squires' Scribbly Gum Lager for us to have a tipple of

**uneekwahn** · 06-20-2011, 00:00

Did some work (well, Browny did, I just watched and gesticulated) on the DIY UQ over the weekend. I didn't get any photos unfortunately, suffice to say it's working well! I'll try to get a couple of shots this weekend and post them up

**JohnSawyer** · 06-20-2011, 00:23

Always good to have a fried there, looking over your shoulder to grimace and gesticulate wildly when you're messing up!

You know the rules: Pics or it didn't happen! Glad to hear the UQ is coming together!