New Bridge Hammock
So I have been contemplating about DIYing a Bridge Hammock since the summer and Hikingdad's recent tutorial on how he builds his bridge hammock gave me the push needed to start designing one for myself. Although, his design was great and very well thought out, I had a slightly different version in mind. egrant5329 had posted a great thread about how he incorporated the triangles of his BH into the actual lay area. I really liked this idea because of two things. It adds storage area for gear inside the hammock and it allows for a much shorter bridge hammock. In his design he utilized both head and foot ends of the hammock to lay in. You can see a picture of his hammock here.
For my BH I decided that I only wanted to utilize the foot end for the lay area and leave the head end for gear storage. The first version that I made about a month ago was great but much longer than I wanted. I had a 7" curve depth with about a 68" curve. The head end spreader bar was 36" with a 30" spreader bar for the foot end. I made sure that the sides of the triangles at each end were equal to the spreader bar width to limit the forces exerted on the spreader bar.
This new version is much shorter with a 60" curve length and a 6" curve depth. I used my curve generator that I posted here for the curve. The head end spreader bar is 36" and the foot end is 30". The sides of the triangles are supposed to be the same length as the spreader bars but due to an error in reading the correct measurements, I cut the fabric short about 6". So the head end needed 4" of fabric added on to make all 3 sides of the triangle equal. I left the foot end alone because the forces of that triangle arnt as bad as the head end and wont be as big a factor for being short 2" on the triangle sides compared to the 30" spreader bar.
The correct length of the blank is 10'6" with a width of 52" at the head end and 50" at the foot end. The first version was 52" at the head end and 45" at the foot end. Both versions feel fine but if I ever remake another one I will go with 48" width at the foot end. I will upload a detailed diagram of the hammock dimensions later on in this thread.
I decided to see if my 18oz of 850fill Goose-Down Full-Size DIY UQ that I made for my gather end hammocks, would fit this Bridge hammock. It did with some slight modifications to the suspension. I added some elastic webbing near the foot end, about 8" down from the end of the UQ. This allowed me to hook the UQ to the foot-end spreader bar. I also added some short pieces of 1/8" shock cord at the head end to hook to the UQ and hold it in place better. So far this is working great but wont know for certain till I get a few nights in it. I plan to add a ridge line to the hammock soon so that when I go to put a bugnet on it, it will hold it up off the hammock. I measured the length of the hammock while hung and got a measurement of 112" and 117" if the hammock is pulled taught. I used mule tape for the webbing on the sides and in the triangles at each end. Sorry I didnt get more close up pics, my camera died soon after shooting some video footage of it. I got like 3 pics and the rest had to be screen captures of the video footage which poor quality. I will upload more pics in this thread soon of detailed close ups. The final weight of this hammock is 274g (9.1oz) with the spreader bars weighing in at 276g (10.4oz). Total weight on scale is 552g. If I ever make another one I am pretty sure I can shave off another 2~3oz without any loss of comfort or change in lay. The hammock fabric is 1.1oz pure finished ripstop nylon in MARPAT camo. I managed to find matching webbing for it but didnt get the pics of that yet. Suspension is just two 6' UCRs.
This thing is so comfortable that I think I may never go back to regular hammocks unless I am desperate to shave weight; but that may not be a factor soon with my next DIY project. Will hold off for now and not spill the beans on that project yet.
Would really like to thank GrizzlyAdams, hikingdad, and egrant5329 for their tutorials and design ideas they shared. They all helped so much. egrant5329 also helped me out alot and I would really like to give him alot of thanks for responding to all my questions. Its people like this that make this place what it is.
I would love to hear any feedback and/or questions. Ill be sure to get some more pics uploaded soon and the schematics of this hammock as well as the next version that I hope to build one day. I will be adding a partial top-cover and bugnet to this hammock soon and I will share the details of that here as well.
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Originally Posted by nuttysquirrel
Very nice hammock, wish I could sleep in a bridge.
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