Hey Guys,
So a couple of weekends ago, I took the girl friend to lake elizabeth park thinking to give her, her first hammock experience. I bought an Eno doubble deluxe and hooked up a polyester webbing suspension to it that I tested for an hour or so during the week. Well I rig it u up fine and sit down on it Anyway the GF goes to sit down on the hammock with me and I hear some faint cracking, I figure its the webbing pulling taught. The unthinkable happens, in less than a second, we're sitting on the floor! The webbing failed. Luckily she wasn't hurt, but the day was kinda shot. Anyway here's some pics of the webbing:
http://i.imgur.com/L04aG.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/kFPdi.jpg
I have absolutely no idea what happened. I weigh about 225-230 and she weighs about 115-120. The carabiners were rated for 1100lbs and I've been assured that the webbing was also rated for over 1000lbs. The double deluxe is rated for #400 but the hammock was completely fine. The stitching didn't even rip on the webbing. This particular set of webbing had been used about 6 times prior for periods of 30min-1hour each only by me. The webbing was stored out of the sunlight in a silnylon stuffsack with the rest of the suspension system.
I can only think of three reasons why the strap could have failed. 1 it rubbed awkwardly on the carabiner (there was no evidence to this). The webbing may have been defective. I also think its possible that the tree bark was at fault. Maybe it wore out the webbing due to the prior 6 times it was used?
So, I'm not feeling so "secure" in the durability or longevity of hammock suspension at this point, so I'm turning to the experts. PLEASE HELP :-/
I'm sort of rethinking how I might go about rigging up something more durable. I've already received replacement webbing, and I've purchased wire gate oval carabiners which while bigger and heavier than the old ones are much smoother as they don't have rivets on the gate, and they have a 5000lb+ rating. I'm wondering if climbing webbing might work instead of the thinner polyester strapping I'm using now. Something like this
http://www.mountaingear.com/pages/pr...tem/640108/N/0 If I could simply switch the webbing to something more durable, I think that would be ideal. I'm willing to carry more weight to not worry that I'll wind up on my but again.
If that won't work than maybe I can simply attach another set of webbing to the hammock with another set of carabiners as a fail safe?
What do you guys think.
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