I've been using 2" poly straps, marlin spikes, and whoopie slings on my bridge hammock for a while now. Recently, my whoopies have gotten a lot harder to adjust. Especially so with the weight of my hammock, pad, sleeping bag, etc. hanging from them. I could have probably built some new whoopies, since they've gotten a little long in the tooth. But try as I might, I never really fell in love with them.
So, after a bunch of poking around HF, on Dutch's and butt-in-a-sling's sites, I decided I really liked the hammock anchors from BIAS. If you watch the youtube video linked on his page, you can see how they work. Pretty neat I thought.
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LINK
The anchors appear to have been designed for a gathered end with a continuous loop. I've also seen a video where they were used on bridge dogbones. I decided that I wanted the hardware to be fixed on the hammock though, so I came up with the below design.
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I made them out of 1/8" thick titanium, and weight tested them to my satisfaction. They're not the prettiest, but they held up to my abuse without failure.
Here's an overview of the total suspension setup.
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Each side has a larks-headed 10' amsteel rope to a 7' Dutch kevlar tree hugger. My hammock dogbones are larks-headed through the larger of the two holes in the hardware, and the free end of the amsteel passes through the smaller hole. It's then secured off in what I can only describe as a backward becket hitch. The loose end of the hitch is still loose, and the line under tension the same. The difference is that the tension line is pulled in the opposite direction as it is traditionally.
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The connection is very secure with no slippage. Easy to set, and extremely easy to undo. To set it, just pull the line to desired length, and fold a loop over on itself over the hardware. To undo it, just pull on the free end. It comes free very easily.
I'm extremely happy with the new setup. I hung in it for a couple hours over the weekend, stressing it, trying to make it fail. Adjustment is a breeze. I dropped more than 5 oz. of weight, and gained 9 feet more usable suspension length.
More pics:
I added an inch of soft tubing to each amsteel/kevlar larks head. This was in order to increase the rope's bend radius, as well as to make it easier to untie in the future if needed. They only weigh about a gram each.
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Before
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After hanging
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Old vs. new
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