I recently made a DIY bridge hammock and I used ski poles I found at a local thrift store as the spreader bars. You can't beat five bucks! The trouble was I had to figure out what kind of connection I was going to use to attach the poles to the suspension triangle. As you can see in the photo below I cut channels in the ends of the pipes. Easy enough with a dremel.

IMG_3566 by pappy2012, on Flickr

IMG_3560 by pappy2012, on Flickr
Once I got everything just right it was like sitting in clouds of cotton candy. the only thing that bothered me was how I connected the bars to the hammock. I was worried that if I wiggled or torked in just the right way the rope would slip out of the channel and I didn't want that to happen. Here was my solution:

IMG_3575 by pappy2012, on Flickr
I made this piece out of two pieces of amsteel. Now the bar channels are flipped so they are horizontal and I feel like it would take a hurricane type force to cause the bar to pop off. When I first made the piece everything was very tight and close but after it had my body weight on it all that slack that I didn't pull tight enough found its way out. Also I should have put locked brummels on each end of 1 inch of splice between the two loops. I've just started playing around with this stuff so I'm sure in the next two models I'll get it just right.

IMG_3570 by pappy2012, on Flickr

IMG_3574 by pappy2012, on Flickr

If anyone has any suggestions or tips I'm all ears.