portable stand

[Shadowmoss]

Here is the picture of Turtle Lady and her stand.

[Knotty]

I think you could probably lessen the pull on the stakes by using longer support pole(s) and angle them at about 45 degrees. Kind of like on a hammock stand. That should translate a lot of the hammocks pull into compression down the support, easing the load on the guy lines. Just make sure the bottom of the support has some way of biting into the soil so it doesn't slip.

[Miguel]

Here is the picture of Turtle Lady and her stand.

That is an awesome stand. I'd love some details on how it's made. Some close up pics of where the sections join would be much appreciated. Any ideas as to weight? If someone was ambitious I bet they could sell a few of those here.

Miguel

[Shadowmoss]

At the Nashville Pizza get together for me being in Nashville this past week Turtle Lady, Hiker Ranky and I played with it out in the parking lot for about an hour. The person who fabricated it for her is NOT interested in making them to sell (at least at the price I suggested...). Hiker Ranky took a lot of pics and was going to look into it more.

It weighs about 35 lbs without the extensions. With the extensions it is around 6' high, and maybe 5 lbs heavier. It is truly cool.

[turtlelady]

Shadowmoss and Miguel:

I am attempting to figure out how to post pictures and meet your requests. Don, my friend who helped me design and build this portable hammock stand is already excited about the next evolution -- a bipod/ridgepole combo.-- simpler, cheaper, lighter, and more compact. Now that Don really understands what a hammock is, and what we crazies want, he thinks he can help better than the from the sketchy specs I originally gave him to work with!

This tripod mets some pretty specific needs. My car is a mid size sedan. I travel to work at festivals, with my 10 x 10 booth, chairs, stools, tables, signage along with my camping gear. So the car was already full. I needed a very compact stand that could be pulled out to camp quickly and easily indoors or out, totally freestanding, stable on uneven ground, and possibly fit inside my booth. I can't destroy my hands and energy in the set up process -- I need them to ply my trade! The joy of how wonderfully I can sleep in a hammock has convinced me to be able to do so most anytime, anywhere. It still needs to be painted so it won't rust. Now I can eliminate the space given a 4" thick foam bedroll I had been taking along whenever I could fit it in, and sleep SOOOOO much better than I ever have since I was a child.

Each tri-pod weighs 7 lbs. The overall weight we guess at 40 lbs. The ridgepole is the weight --it is made of 3/4" rigid conduit, with a connector piece of solid steel rod milled to fit snugly inside the conduit. We made this prototype from things we could readily find at the local Lowe's and TSC. We did it in a labor intensive way that was within our capabilities given the shop tools and know-how available to us at the time. We learned things.

Each end, top and bottom, of the tripod legs has an 3 1/2" steel rod inserted to give it integrity for the connections. The ridgepole slips over a 6" long steel pin that pivots up and down and fits snugly into, but is NOT pinned to, the ridgepole. The conduit legs were cut down to 53" to fit in the car trunk. The ridge pole was cut into three pieces, two of which are 53 inches. I am not currently using the 14" piece left over, but I can insert it over the steel rod connector if I want. As you see it used here, the height is 50". The distance between the legs is 37". The furthest spread of the legs is 11 feet. The ruler in the photo is 48" long. Photo#4 shows the connection point spread a bit to reveal the connector rod, and shows the 14" optional piece cut out. Photo#5 shows the extender sections, and has the tennis ball revealed to show the strengthening rod inserted in both ends of the legs. The tennis ball protects floors for indoor use but also protects the steel rod from dirt and moisture somewhat in outdoor use, especially until I get it painted. Photo #1 shows an eyebolt added for convenience but is totally unnecessary. Photo #8, Hiker Ranky at 270 lbs. tests the stand successfully as Shadowmoss paces, trying to figure how to get Don to build her one. Maybe the upgraded bipod model will suit her better.

Don will get on and address more technical questions if needed. Don does not believe this version could be made profitably for sale. He enjoys the fun of creating new solutions. We both are excited to see how some of you may evolve this idea further. After talking with Don today, I am going to try to replace my entire heavy ridgepole with Risk's style chain link fence top rail cut in half and reduce half of the weight in this system.

Many thanks to Shadowmoss, and all the folks at Neo's hangout for their encouragement of my evolution as a hanger. Thanks to all the DIY folks who have posted in the past that made me have courage to go forth and create.

Special thanks to Don and his lovely, tolerant wife, for being willing to postpone building their new compost bin, to let me move in with them for a week to create and build this mystery thing just because it would be fun, and to spend long, late hours out in the shop.

Bring on the upgrades!
Joyfully, Turtlelady ( who awaits arrival of her BB hammock, and OES tarp to complete this sleep system.)

[Caveman2]

Hi folks,

This is my first post on this forum, I'm Don, aka Caveman2, who helped Turtlelady with her double tripod hammock stand. BTW, the idea to suspend the hammock on the ridge pole was from another do-it-yourselfer's project on this forum. I really liked the idea of putting all the major stress and pressure in the ridgepole.

I'd like to add a couple of things about the stand and the photos for clarity and a safety point or two. Like Turtle lady said, we chose to make the stand from readily available materials that can be found at Tractor Supply and Lowe's.

However...

The bolts are not regular steel but are hardened steel. This is important because regular steel may bend and/or break under the stresses that are placed on the bolts as the legs actually bind between the bolts they hinge on and the side of the angle iron on the tripod heads as shown in the photos. Same for the bolts that holds the large pins that goes inside of the ridgepole. The same kind of bolts were used everywhere.

The eyebolts on the tripod head are stainless steel, but are NOT for rigging/hanging the hammock. That would not be safe. It is for guiding other lashing that may be needed on questionable ground to assure that the end pins do not pull out of the ridge pole or as a utility attachment point to hang small items off the ground.

You see three large threaded rods in the photos, one on each tripod to hold the ridge pole and one in the center of the ridgepole. There is absolutely no need for these to be threaded. They do not thread into the ridge pole but fit loosely inside the ridge pole so as not to bind and make it easier to assemble the stand. Since we used what we could easily find locally, without making longer runs to local machine shops for round stock, we bought threaded rod to make the large diameter pins. I actually turned about half of the threads off of them on a lathe so the pins would fit inside the conduit ridge pole. If I already had regular round stock about the right size and length I would have used that (GLADLY!) instead, but we didn't have that luxury in the time we had to come up with this. The central rod could have been a piece of thick wall tubing that would fit inside the ridgepole, but again, we would have had to spend more time finding it locally and it probably would have cost about the same.

So the major pieces do not thread together, they slide together. Turtlelady cringed at the thought (actually the weight) of the long, solid center connector. With the amount of flex in the ridge pole with me in the hammock I decided that the longer pin in the center was safer.

The tripod legs are half inch EMT conduit. Every end is reinforced with solid steel round stock about four inches long and lath turned to fit inside the tubes on both ends. This will assure that the tubing will not bend or collapse on the ends that contact hard surfaces (even though they are inside tennis balls- but the tubing would cut the ball wall) and reinforces the other end where the hardened bolts go through to connect and hinge or pivot at the head of the tripods keeping the EMT from collapsing.

If anyone is interested and has any questions, I'll try to help.

Caveman2 (regular Caveman was already taken)

[usquebaugh]

New here so hopefully I don't stand on toes or repeat known stuff.

I've just picked up a Hennessey Explorer and am looking for an indoor/portable stand.

Looking at the frame, every tube is under compression or could be rigged in such e.g. move the mount points to the outboard end of the ridge pole. This reminds me of a mast on a sail boat which is another hobby of mine. Masts carry many times the load of a hammock on even a small boat it can be many tons of compression.

Masts are also very tall and slender and very light. Weight aloft kills sailboat performance. Most mast failures are not the material failing but the support structure failing, driving the mast out of column.

The most obvious support structure on a mast is external guys, shrouds and the like. I saw one commercial product using such a system to suspend a hammock.

Another and more appropriate technique is to pre-compress the mast with internal rigging. The idea being the mast is kept in column by the internal guys. No external rigging.

A simple way is to have two eyebolts or hooks one at either end of the tube with the eyes in the tube and the threaded shaft through a nut resting on a washer at the end of the tube. Modern high strength cord is attached to the eyebolts. By tightening the nuts the eyebolts move apart and you can tension the line to put the required load on the tube.

I'm thinking the whole structure can be made much lighter using thinner walled and/or smaller diameter tubing. Also multi section tubes will not reduce overall beam strength or require heavy joints.

I'll pick up some tubing and hardware this weekend and see if I can rig something. Ideally I'd like to get down to arrow shafts but I think that might be asking too much :-)

[pizza]

Perhaps it's just the picture angles but it appears as though the ridgeline on the BB has too much slack. It seems the stand is not providing enough distance to spread the hammock out.

[turtlelady]

We made no attempt to optimize the hang on the BB for the photo taken. Hiker Ranky hung his hammock to the prussic loops I had on the stand. He wanted to feel how stable the stand was, and to see the effect of the weight on the ridgepole. The optional 14" section of ridgepole was not used, so the ridgepole as shown is 106 inches. I believe the BB ridgeline is 101".