90 degree Hammock chair/lounger

[pdxhanger]

I wanted to report a catastrophic failure of the Tyvek wings recently on the sleeping version of the hammock. I was messing around with blankets in the dark (I had traveled across country to spend time with my parents, and was using multiple blankets provided by my mother rather than my usual quilt) and I did the thing that I always stress to people that they should avoid: I sat in the foot section. The tyvek wings on one side all failed, dumping me on the ground.

I replaced the "knee wing" – the one closest to the main body section – with an apparently uncoated medium-weight cordura fabric, which is heavier than the tyvek but working well, and is much more robust. (I don't know a lot about the cordura-ish fabric – I got it from JoAnn's fabrics locally, and you have to kind of go by feel because they don't tell you much about it.)

I will experiment more with this kind of fabric for the other wings when I get back home, and report on whether they are functionally different than tyvek.

I wanted to report this, so anyone trying to make one would be forewarned, although I think under normal circumstances it would be harder to sit in the foot section of the lounger than the foot section of the sleeping hammock.

I made a new 90 degree sleeping hammock with cordura wings, and it adds a lot of weight. I've got a couple of different fabric types coming to experiment with. I'll report what I find.

[pdxhanger]

Well, I feel like a real flip-flopper here, but I'm going back to the "2 GE pieces" approach. I can't find a good material for the wings. Although I will say that my wife and I have been doing close to weekly hikes for a couple of years using the same hammock loungers with Tyvek wings, and they are still working ok and haven't failed. But it is hard to recommend it to others. The cordura material started to stretch in a problematic way after a few nights sleeping in it.

I have a new innovation for the other design, though, that I am very excited about. Not to be a tease, but I am excited enough about it that I am not going to post it until I figure out if it has commercial potential that I want to follow up on.