Convert ANY netless hammock to a hammock chair.

[hk2001]

This is something I've been working on for the last 6 months at Hound Dog Hammock Gear, I've had 4 people (plus me) testing this in various designs for the last 5 months. But, given recent events, I've decided to release this to the DIY community. Keeping with the "Dog" theme most of my creations have.. I give you: The Doggy Bag

What you need for this:

• Scrap of nylon big enough to make a bishop bag
• A piece of webbing the length of your fabric piece +2".
• 1 piece of amsteel to splice, or a continuous loop
• Suspension hardware with 2 hooks (Cinch bugs, etc)
• 1 Netless Hammock with continuous loops on the end.

First, be familiar with the design of a Bishop bag I skip a few steps in the photos with the assumption that people know how to make the channels etc.

Start with the fabric. For this piece, I'm using a 20" long, by 13.5" tall piece of fabric. Proceed to fold down the corners (I fold over 1 more time then shown in the UltimateHang diagram) and add the channels.

Lay the webbing across the outside center of the bag, lengthwise. Here I'm using 1/2" poly webbing from DIY Gear Supply

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Sew down the webbing leaving a 1/2" gap in the middle, and stopping 1" from each end of the fabric. The 1/2" gap in the middle is where your continuous loop will go, so if your dealing with a prespliced piece, add it in before you sew.

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Roll hem the bag closed like you would with any bishop bag, then overlap the webbing, and add a few bar tacks to secure the webbing together.

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Splice your continious loop into the 1/2" gap if you didn't install it prior to sewing.
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Forgive me for taking photos inside of the hammock hanging, it currently looks like this outside
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Hang your hammock like you normally would
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Then, remove the suspension from the foot end of the hammock, Folding the entire hammock in half, and add the continuous loop to the double sided hook suspension on the head end. On this hammock, the head end has a blue continuous loop, and the foot has a silver.
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Pull the bishop bag down to the mid point of your hammock, and attach your hammocks foot end suspension to the continuous loop on the bishop bag.
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You now have a fully functional DOUBLE LAYER hammock chair Just be sure your sitting on fabric, and not in the space between the folds.

This concept has gone through about 10 design tweaks over the last few months. So let me get some of the most basic trial and error questions out of the way:

We started with just a continuous loop around the midpoint of the hammock, but found friction would start eating into the nylon of the hammock. I then moved into making a sleeved loop using nylon, but quickly realized I was already carrying something capable of acting as the sleeve: The bishop bag! I then moved onto trying various designs without using the webbing.. all of which wore down pretty quick..

In mid January we came up with the design shown above, and across 4 testers, and myself we've have over 1,000 hours of testing with no failures, and no abnormal damage to the hammock bodies. The hammock shown is the one I've used all winter, and the original bishop bag I created for it is still going strong. I simply threw this red bag together to try and show the step by step process.

Depending on the webbing used, this adds about 1-1.5 ounces of weight to what you carry.. Far less than carrying a separate hammock chair.

Please note: this has only been tested using NylonD 1.6, PolyD 1.4, Epsilon 1.55 and HyperD 1.6 for the hammock bodies, and 1.6 "D" material, or 1.9 ripstop for the Doggy Bag

Be aware that you will need to tweak the lengths of your suspension, and/or the height they attach to the trees. In particular, you should raise the head end on the tree, and lower the foot end on the tree.. Adjust lengths as needed.

If you use a ridgeline, remove it before converting to a hammock chair

And I'd like to say thank you to Dutch for giving me early access to a few pieces of hardware while I was testing this out! We'd be a lot farther behind in the design of this if it wasn't for him.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.