How well does amsteel hold up to abrasion?

[wayover13]

I'm in my second year of experimenting with hammocks. The wife is not a fan of camping, but she's become really fond of taking a nap in the hammocks we're experimenting with. So I'm making some progress on that front.

I got some tree slings that form part of the suspension. What goes between the tree sling and the hammock end, where the actual tension adustments occur, are some cheap lashing straps I got from HFT (see http://www.harborfreight.com/set-of-...aps-67386.html). Those have been pretty effective, but I'd like to use something lighter and less bulky.

I've decided that I could use some lengths of amsteel to replace those lashing straps. I'm familiar with the so-called "trucker's hitch," which I used to use when tying down loads on trucks, and I knew it could work for this sort of application (see http://www.animatedknots.com/truckers/). But thinking about using that sort of knot has made me wonder about the abrasion resistance of amsteel. That sort of binding generates a fair amount of abrasion where the loose end pulls through the loop to take out tension. Plus, there are the half hitches that secure the binding, which do some amount of abrading as well.

If I were to go with a scheme like this as part of my suspension, how well could I expect the amsteel to hold up to the abrasion? Every time a hang is done and undone, the line would be experiencing a greater or lesser amount of abrading. Would amsteel be expected to hold up pretty well to this usage, or would it begin to fray and weaken quickly?

TIA for input.

[WaffleBox]

It is slick so it won't experience much abrasion against itself. But it's not designed to be used with knots. It's designed to be spliced. I think the compression experienced at the knots under weight will be more of a concern than abrasion.

[SilvrSurfr]

As Wafflebox said, Amsteel is designed for splices, not knots. The rope can be severely derated by knots, up to 60%, so the 1600 lbs. breaking strength can drop to 640 lbs. with knots. In my case, I'm 160 lbs., so I go from a 10-1 safety margin down to a 4-1 safety margin.

Also, I've only used knots in Amsteel a couple of times, but they can be an absolute beast to get undone.