First, a little bit of background. I joined HF a year or so ago, and immediately fell in love with the idea of a double bridge hammock. After searching the forums and reading for a while, though, I quickly realized that I'd need to try my hand at a standard bridge hammock before I even thought about doing a double.
Following the excellent writeups from Grizz and Teedee (along with all the other excellent information available), I came up with my first version of a single bridge hammock (threads are here and here.
Surprisingly, my first effort worked out OK. I spent some time fidgeting with the suspension and making an Insultex underquilt à la TeeDee's method; I haven't uploaded those pictures yet. Suffice to say the hammock is comfortable, and I learned a lot during the process of making it.
So now, full of (false?) confidence, I've decided to take a stab at making a double bridge hammock. I've taken the basic structure from studying dblhmmck's posts (specifically, the basic fabric pattern), and I've kind of been running from there. This thread will chronicle the progress/challenges, and hopefully lead to some good ideas from the more experienced DIY'ers out there. If you're curious about the color scheme -- my wife has a bright yellow mustang convertible, and I'm trying to mimic that to help increase her enthusiasm for the project
I decided to start with a bridge hammock sized to my wife and myself. I'm 5'4 and she's shorter, so I'm using a hammock length of 72" (4" allowance at top & bottom), a width of 44", and an arc cut depth of 6". I used a posterboard on which I traced and cut out a parabola 72" long and 6" high as my template for my arc cuts.
Here you can see both the cut edge of the fabric and the template.
So I cut out two matching hammocks (44" wide, 72" long with a 6" arc cut on each side. I followed the method of dblhmmck to create the overlap -- basically, you overlay the two hammocks so that you have a 50% overlap at the foot end and a 10% overlap at the head end, and trim off the excess fabric. You can see the results below. These images show a preliminary version of dblhmmck's design with the overlap stopping at the shoulder; I re-cut after I took these pictures to have the overlap be 10% at the head end.
Next, I looked at the edges. The head and foot end are finished with grosgrain ribbon. For the arc support, I'm using 1/2" polyester webbing, and I decided to join the two halves together using a 1" piece of polypro webbing. You can see the first piece finished below, as well as a closeup of the webbing loops on the arc and the center webbing.
The central 1" webbing piece I sewed on with a single line of stitches, then sewed the second piece on top of it, so that the webbing is "sandwiched" between the two halves of the hammock. I then rolled the seam once (so I have two layers of fabric above & below the polypro webbing, and sewed 5 lines of stitching (since I'm paranoid about it unrolling and dumping us out the bottom).
Finally, in order to give me two distinct hammocks (instead of one large bridge hammock where both occupants get smooshed together), I sewed a piece of 1/2" webbing down the middle. I have loops spaced every 8", as well as loops at the end - this will give me the ability to either use the webbing as the support for the center or to hang the center webbing from a rope arc. That's still more of an idea than anything well thought-out.
I have some images of my first test hang. I just wanted to see what it looked like hanging up, so these in no way represent the final version. I just took some mason line and some old dowels/broom handles and hung it up. I was thinking at first that it might be nice to use a single spreader bar at the top; the angled structure of the head end that I have now prevents this - I'm going to have to use two separate spreader bars at the end, meeting in the middle at the center webbing.
I've since acquired some spreader bars and put on a preliminary version of the rigging (I'm going to be going with a ridge "triangle" and a three-tree suspension system). Heading out tomorrow for the first "real" test hang and to try and get my suspension dialed in. Here's hoping
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