Nice project & looks easy to do with the detailed instructions. Bookmarked... very nice!
Nice project & looks easy to do with the detailed instructions. Bookmarked... very nice!
If you would be willing to share the file for this that would be awesome! I love your it organizes and attaches at the same time.Originally Posted by trick420
So I FINALLY finished mine and got it mounted and tested. Very nice quilt! I have a question about the clew length though. According to the tutorial the clews need to be 21" for a 10 foot hammock. A lot of the photos I'm seeing I see the clews come together and there's a foot or more of cordage to the end of the hammock. With mine, I only have maybe 2 inches. Is that right?
Photos here:
As you can see, the clews end just under the hammock end. This is just barely tensioned too - I didn't stretch it out at all.
Here's a pic of my finished clews with my Clewranglerlock 2.0 and a Western Country Whipping. This is a clewrangler combined with a line lock that I 3D printed. This one is done in 1/32 shock cord, but the clewranglerlock will take up to 2mm shock cord. This one uses a section of Zing-it with a perfection loop at one end and a small s-biner to attach to the hammock making for a very clean easy to adjust suspension.
Got my quilts in yesterday and spent last night ripping seams. it wasn't bad at all if you rip the ends and pull from the middle of each square. I had it done in a couple of hours. Tonight I hope to get the kam snaps and grosgrain installed. I selected the dark blue quilts. I was thinking I would have the shiny side towards the hammock as an extra added heat reflector.
I built my first set, just finished yesterday. Had a hard time finding 1/2" grosgrain when I ran out 1/2 way through, so I used 5/8" on the other side. Haven't yet tried them as we hit a cold snap and I don't want to venture outside...
I used Blue blankets, with white Kam snaps for color 1 and silver for color 2.
Completed this project this weekend combined with putting "doors" on the Kelty Noah 12 via kam snaps last week. I think I might be ready for some cold weather hanging now.
The most frustrating part of the project to me was making those darn clews! I have an 11' hammock so I went with the suggested measurements of 27" with 24" on the ends which meant I need around at least 55' of shock cord for each end. Most of the places I saw on Amazon only offered it in 25', 50' and 100' orders so I had to go with two 100' sections. No big deal, it's always good to have more than less....however, trying to deal with 100' of that 1/32" stuff was enough to almost make you lose your religion. From the moment it came out of the package and I tried to unravel it....bird's nest. Every time I made a pass around the nail.....bird's nest. I'd scratch my left ear...bird's nest. I'd blink my eyeballs...bird's nest.
But even after working though all that and whipping the ends, I also struggled to get what I felt like were the right strands in the "right" order on the quilt. Some strands got wrapped around each other or twisted together when moving from the board setup to the quilt. If I were to make another one, I think I'd have a board with thirteen nails in it to represent the 13 snap loops. Then once I was done with the whipping, I would take one off the nail and snap it to the quilt. Take the next one off the nail and snap it to the quilt, etc, etc.
I used hair bands to try and control all the clew strands for packing it up and it worked out pretty well. I did end up with a twist on one end while setting up that required me to unsnap and untwist a couple of strands but nothing major.
What I'm hesitant about now is that when I lay in the hammock, I seem to have more coverage at my feet than at my head. I feel like the quilt is past my feet while it stops right at my shoulders on the other end. If I slide myself down to adjust for that then my feet end up higher than my head. I've played with attaching the clew at the head end further up the whoopie sling but I feel like when it's far enough up to cover my head and neck, it's too tight underneath and my weight is compressing the down. My fear is that I'm going to need to redo the clew at the foot end and make it a little longer overall.
And because I don't want to do the clew thing again right now (maybe when I restock up on my beer supply....), I've come up with this completely blasphemous idea of eliminating the clews (forgive me leiavoia!)
Basically, I'm thinking of turning the four loops on the corners at a 45 degree angle out. Then adding loops down both sides every 7 inches to make a channel for shock cord on each side to run head to toe. Then I'll use the original loops at the head and foot end with some shock cord to gather it like the traditional underquilts seem to do.
This should still let me use all the configurations of Castor as the secondary quilt but it's so much less cordage to deal with or to worry about getting tangled up.
The green objects on the following diagrams are loops from leiavoia's outline. The sky blue, red, and purple objects are my modifications:
1. Add loops down the sides:
2. Shock cord down the sides:
3. Shock cord with cord locks on the head and foot ends:
50% done with my project. I have the Pollux finished and tested now I just have to get busy with the kam snaps on the castor. I already have the seams ripped on it.
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@chknbone: I totally understand the cordage birds nest. I put virtually all of my cordage into a quick-deploy figure-eight hank. That prevents tangles. Definitely check out the youtube videos on the topic if you don't already know this technique. Works for any kind of small cord.
Other tips:
Use a caribiner to make the clews. It's going to make it a 5 minute job.
It totally doesn't matter which nettles go to which anchors. You might want it to look as pretty as possible, but functionally, it makes no difference.
If you quilt is not aligning properly, make the clews shorter than recommended and tie on a dedicated cord to the ring to tie to the hammock. This lets you slide the whole thing back and forth to your liking. That's how do mine. The instructions on the website are for ideal conditions where the clew terminates right at the hammock suspension.
I obviously don't recommend you put side channels on this design. There are more factors that go into it than you may realize. The biggest is probably the 60" blanket width is not going to get along with uplift of a side channel suspension. The other issue is major problems with cold spots. You're welcome to innovate, but if you go off the rails, you're on your own. No complaining allowed ;-)
LOL - fair enough! I haven't committed the ultimate sin yet....
Trick420 was kind enough to share his latest 3D files to printing the "clew wrangler" with me so I was working with running the shock cord through each individual hole instead of just into a caribiner which also contributed to fighting the birds nests. I watched Jellybean's YouTube videos this evening and saw she created a jig with a nail for each nettle. I redid my jig tonight and straightened out my existing clew/nettles following her example and feel like I got more consistency with my nettles (I admit that it probably made zero difference to the way I had it snapped in before but this satisfied my anal retentive tendencies).
I'll keep playing with it as is before "going off the rails". Thanks for all the write-ups and instructions.
edit: "Jellybean" should be "Jellyfish" (whoops)
That's a great idea! Are you happy with how it turned out? Do that Cat-cuts give you any trouble getting a tight closure? I've been just criss-crossing by corner tie-outs so that the "doors" overlap a few inches, but this looks like a good upgrade.Completed this project this weekend combined with putting "doors" on the Kelty Noah 12 via kam snaps last week. I think I might be ready for some cold weather hanging now.
Same problem here. Half of my build time was spent unravelling the mess of cord I ended up with just by taking it out of the ziploc that it came in.
I hit a personal record with the Gemini Friday night: 18* in 2-layer mode.
I was using a 20* Revelation TQ, HH Deep Jungle, and a standard CDT Gemini in 2-Layer mode. Clothing was relatively sparse: silk base layer with the thinner Army Polypropylene bottoms and top plus a fleece balaclava.
I had a few cool spots, but overall I stayed perfectly warm. As it stands, I don’t think that I would go to 3-Layer mode because most of my cold spots were at my sides and shoulders. I’m also not certain I would push it much lower without supplemental insulation like a pad.
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