How to Hammock

A while back, I made a rope hammock.

People in general seem to think that this is pretty neat, and some even want to know how to make their own!

For them, I've decided to write a tutorial. You'll find that here.

If you've ever made one of those para-cord survival bracelets, the net of the hammock is the same knot.

There are a few other ways to tie it, this is just the easiest to draw.

In order to make sure you have an even net, it's a good idea to use your forearm or something to measure out the space between the knots.

When you move to your next row of knots, the two rightmost strands of the knots on the previous rows will form the two leftmost for the knots on the next row.

And to give a visual idea of how they all fit together, this confusing mess is more or less what you'll end up with.

I used 48 strands that were each 18 feet long in my hammock.

You could probably get by with as few as 36.

Once I made the net about 6 feet long, I took the ends of the rope, and invented a knot that bundles 4 strands and gives a good stop.

This knot is kinda a pain to tighten and if you can't keep it together, it will turn to spaghetti.

To tighten it, make sure to hold everything still, and slowly work your way around a few times, pulling the loops a little tighter each time until there isn't any give.

After that, turn each strand over the knot, making a single square braid (Like what you use to make lanyards. It always reminded me of closing a box)

From that, I used a 4 strand round braid to bring the 4 strands into 1 thicker one.

I took this around another braided rope and used and eye splice to close it.

The braided rope was then tied to itself and to a metal ring to finish off the end of the hammock.

The same was done on the other side.

A rope is then turned around the ring to hang the hammock with.

Conveniently, these ropes can also be used to turn the bundled hammock into a sort of backpack

~ttsgeb