WV, I have GERD & nocturnal asthma so I need the top of my body, and especially my head, to sleep high. You made the knee ridge by shortening the width of the hammock's material. Might one raise the head of the hammock by doing the same thing, namely, shortening the width of the material at the head end? Do you have any thoughts about what such a design would look like? Would the drawing you did before, which looked like a V on each side of the hammock then look like a W? Thank you so much!
I know this isn't directed at me and I'm very new to building bridges, but yes you can shorten the width to raise end. I don't remember how far back it was but some users here have experimented with tighter fabric at the end and it's resulted in what you're describing. Keep in mind that as the fabric gets tighter it's going to greatly increase the tension and the stress and possibility of failure.
It's not impossible but it may take some playing with the pattern and different fabrics to find the lay that you need without sacrificing durability or comfort.
With increased sewing skills from other projects, getting close to trying something like this.
Dee, before you change the shape of your first PBH, you may learn some things about it that make it unnecessary or point to other changes that you hadn't planned. I hang my hammock with the head end higher. Gravity will make me slide toward the foot end, as it would if I did the same with a gathered end hammock, but the knee ridge acts as a barrier for my butt that stops the slide before my feet reach the other end. I haven't experimented much to see how much higher the head end can be, but there may be quite a wide range of comfortable angles. I have experimented with various pilliows, trying to get head and neck support without needing the extra weight and bulk of a larger pillow. These experiments have included tying a cross-wise mini-hammock to the sides of the main hammock, lifting my head. That might be similar to making the head end narrower. So far, this has not been as comfortable as simply using a pillow. Now, to backtrack a bit, I did experiment with making the hammock narrower under my neck, and I tried to figure out where the second angle needed to be. The way that was done was to cross my arms and grab the edges with my fingers, then push down on the fabric with my thumbs, stretching it tighter. That helped locate the exact spot to put the neck ridge. It needs to be the right distance from the knee ridge, and that's going to be different for each person. Also the angle is going to be less than the knee ridge angle, and the mere presence of a second edge angle is going to change the effect of the knee angle. In other words, there will be many more possible configurations. One can end up building many, many prototypes. (One did.) There's a way of adjusting just one prototype, if it has edge webbing instead of a tendon in a channel. It involves folding a short section of the webbing over and stittching it down (with strong thread), then folding it back the other way and stitching again with three rows of stitching. I used that to make my first PBH, modifying a polyester bridge that BER sent to me. I'll try to find a link to that hammock later. Right now I'm overdue on a mountain bike trail. Back to the edge angles - here's a rough drawing of what a PBH with both knee and neck ridges would look like. Note: angles and edge lengths are not accurate! In short, this is what you might do. I suggest you build a simpler PBH and experiment with hanging heights and pillows.
PBH with neck ridge.jpg
Dee, to continue, here's a post with videos of the GrizzBER bridge, most of which have to do with shaped insulation, but at 6 minutes in the first video I show how rolling the edge webbing in various spots creates ridges under my knees, lower back, and neck.
https://www.hammockforums.net/forum/...light=grizzber
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks