so there are a lot of new people that bring up the idea of using paracord for part of their suspension or to string their tarp and the fine folks on here tell them about the stretch of paracord (rightfully so) and how it's isn't the best thing to use

so i devised a little experiment yesterday to see how much paracord really did stretch to maybe give an example to new people so they can see what we all are talking about

i started with a 10' piece of 550 paracord and tied a 10lb weight to one end and hung it off the deck to see how much it would stretch, i made sure that there was exactly 10' between the knots

the cord immediately stretched to 129" so a 9" stretch from the weight right away

after an hour i checked it again and it had stretched another 1"

checked it again 2 hours later and it was still the same

i then saturated the paracord with water and let it hang for an hour and a half before i measured it again and it had stretched an additional 1.5"

left it over night and checked it again this morning and it was still the same as the last measurement

so a 10' piece stretched at total of 11.5" with only 10lbs of weight, image if was on a hammock suspension

or say you are using paracord for your tarp set-up and have 30' for a ridgeline and another 5' on each corner for tie-outs, you are looking at a potential for quite a bit of stretch in your set-up

now obviously you are going to string things tight, but even after that over some time you will get stretch with paracord and if it rains you will get even more, so even though the cord was tight when you stung it your going to experience some more stretch

hope this helps someone out when they are thinking about using paracord, of course like all things i'm sure there are people that use it and happy with it which is great, but like they say HYOH

boot