Hennessy Hammocks And Whoopie Slings

[Rusty Ole' Bucket]

I had some interest in a post on Black Fly's thread about hammock camping and some of the DIY aspects of making your own gear. I have done a fair bit of DIY construction and also modifying my purchased hammocks to suit my needs. I promised I'd post up the procedure and pictures of the modifications to my new Hennessys, including the whoopie slings, and a quick peek at the GIANT utility tarp I made, so here it is.

Here's a shot of the supplies for the new ridge lines and whoopie slings.
1. Amsteel Blue 1/8"
2. Nite Ize Cam Jam (this isn't necessary, you can use a truckers hitch, but this makes it really easy to set the ridge line tension)
3. Tree straps for the ridge line (simple cam buckle straps you can find anywhere)
4. Large knitting needle
5. Heavy wire for buries
6. Ruler or measuring tape
7. Razor knife (forget scissors, use a razor or box cutter on Amsteel)
8. Masking tape


Let's do the tarp ridge line first since it's the simplest, I'll also include some Amsteel working tips in this section too which will help explaining the whoopie slings.

I used 25' of Amsteel for the tarp ridge lines, with a fixed loop on one end and a stop at the other end. One thing about Amsteel, since it's made up of thousands of tiny fibers, it will fuzz up bad once you cut it. I've found a piece of masking tape really helps with assembly after cuts. You're going to be passing this back through itself so a fuzzed up end makes things difficult.




The fixed loop is made up of a Brummel hitch and a bury. A short bury, the sort you use for a fixed loop, for 1/8" Amsteel is 6 1/2" (50 x rope dia.). You'll mark the end of the rope with a sharpie at 6 1/2" from the end (forms the bury), then at 6" from the original mark to form a 3" loop when doubled over on itself. Next insert the knitting needle at the 12 1/2" mark. This stuff works like a Chinese finger trap, so it helps to scrunch it up in order to get the needle and the bury tool in there. Be careful to get the same amount of thread bundles on each side of the needle so that it goes directly through the middle of the rope.




Next you're going to pass the 6 1/2" end of the rope through the hole you made with the needle, until the second mark is just past the hole and insert the needle at that mark. Pass the long end through the second hole and pull it tight to form the Brummel hitch.






Next comes the bury, this is what actually creates the tension in order to make the fixed loop not slip out. First you need to taper the end of the 6 1/2" tail that's left after the Brummel hitch by removing thread bundles. This is a 12 strand rope and the formula for calculating the amount to remove for a taper is strands÷2-1, so for a 12 strand rope it would be 5 (12÷2-1=5). The taper should be about 1/3 of the total bury. You'll use the needle to gently separate the strands from the rope moving down as you go to space out the strands to be removed and form a taper in the rope. Once you have them all pulled out, carefully cut them at the rope. The taper keeps the rope from breaking at the point where the bury stops.




Here's the finished taper:


Now it's time to finish the fixed loop with a short bury of the tail we just tapered. Take your heavy wire and double it over to form a loop about 12" long. Since Amsteel is a hollow braid rope, you can thread the tool right up through the center. Start about 1 1/2" further out on the rope than your tail to make sure it all buries and insert the bury tool into the center of the rope. Work it up until you get to the Brummel hitch and make it come out just below the top end of the tail. Slide the last 1/2" or so of the tail into the tool and gentle start to pull the tail back down through the rope. It will take a little wiggle to get it started into the rope, but don't force it, just slowly roll the rope between your fingers while you pull and it will start. Once the tool pulls out the bottom hole you will need to "milk" the bury to tighten everything up. That's it, you have a fixed loop.













The other end gets a stop to finish the end. It's basically just a very short bury turned back on itself and pull tight. It just cleans up the loose end.





I just passed the stop end through the Cam Jam, added a couple of Prusik loops and "S" biners to attach the tarp to the ridge line to finish it off. That's it, that's how you make a ridge line for a tarp. As mentioned above, the Cam Jam isn't necessary, a truckers hitch works just as good, just a bit more fiddly.

Sorry for the long post, I tried to condense it as much as possible. Let me know if you guys have any questions. In the next post, I'll show the modifications to the stock Hennessys and whoopie sling construction.

Rusty

 

[Rusty Ole' Bucket]

I use the tree straps provided by Hennesy, a continuous loop at the hammock and carabiners in between to make set up and take down quick. If you're trying to cut weight, the carabiners can be dropped and everything just rigged by threading the fixed loop through the continuous loop on the hammock and through the tree straps, this is also how I attached the continuous loops to the hammock itself without hardware.

I love Hennessy Hammocks, but I think their Spectra cord suspension rope is antiquated and very difficult to adjust. My original, that I've been hanging in for a while got cinch rings and tree straps pretty quickly. I started making whoopie slings for some of my DIY stuff and really like the light weight and adjustability so that's why I decided to make them for the new hammocks.

Here's how I modified the hammocks:

This is the set up as it comes from the factory with 3/8" Spectra rope. It's heavy and very stiff, it's almost impossible to get the recommended figure 8 knots and the height correct first try. You wind up tying it several times to get it right. In a nod to the fact that most people that buy them replace the suspension, Hennessy added in a sewn in web belt in place of the whipped end gather technique they used before to attach the suspension.


I made a continuous loop using the techniques from my first post to attach to the web strap, then replaced the end cover using a zip tie. I use silver Amsteel for the head end and black for the foot end of the hammock. Quick note, Samson calls this 1/8" rope when in actuality is more like 3/16".






That's it for the hammock suspension changes. Ok, for the whoopie slings you'll repeat the fixed loop on one end. Since these will be supporting my weight (and my wife in her hammock) I made the buries roughly 30% longer than they need to be just out of an abundance of caution. That won't affect the way they perform, but it will increase the weight that would cause it to slip, in fact the rope should break before these slip. The fixed loop end bury will be 9" instead of the recommended 6 1/2" and the long bury that forms the adjustable part of the sling will be 12" instead of 9 3/8" (75 x rope dia.) The finished product is adjustable from 24" to 10'.

After you add the fixed loop to one end, make a mark 12" from the end of your fixed loop bury. This is where your adjustable loop end will enter the center of the rope for the long bury, it will come out right at the end of the short bury for the fixed loop. Add a bead of some sort to the rope in the adjustable loop to keep it from accidentally being pulled to far and buried, just creating a large stop. Next fish the bury tool up through the rope starting at the fixed loop bury tail and out at your 12" mark. You will want to taper your long end of your rope to facilitate pulling it back through the long bury. Then you use the taper to make a stop and finish the adjustable tail of your whoopie slings.





The rope will slide through itself making it adjustable and once you milk the long bury it's not going anywhere. I add a slippery half hitch to them just to make my wife feel better then I roll the excess up and tie it to the suspension out of the way. This is how it looks rigged with the whoopie slings and separate ridge line for my tarp. I added a few Prusik knots here and there for extra storage, etc. My wife loves dragon flies so I added a few silver ones on Prusiks here and there to decorate her hammock a bit.


So, that's about it, that's how I modify and hang my Hennessy hammocks. Y'all let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to answer them.

Next I'll do a quick post of my DIY mess hall/motorcycle shed, then stop bothering y'all.

Rusty

 

[Rusty Ole' Bucket]

So the last thing I'd like to share is a rather large DIY project that is part of my motorcycle camping set up. It afforded me an area to cook and store my bike out of the rain while I was riding without having to do it all crammed in next to my hammock. It breaks down to about the size of a football and two 18" shock poles. Everything was sized to just drop in a saddle bag. I always just called it my utility tarp. Some of my riding buddies made fun of it till I was nice and dry and they weren't on a trip or two. A couple of those guys switched to hammocks exclusively on their bikes and ditched the tents for good and would always come over to my shelter to cook and hang out. I miss those guys, I might have to make a trip out that way soon.

The utility tarp is made from 70D ripstop digital camo nylon fabric (60" bolt), is 22' long and 9'-6" wide. It's material sealed using clear silicone and mineral spirits to make it waterproof. 5 tie outs to a side, staggered at the back for my bike, with pull outs on each end to form doors so I can close it in during really bad weather. I also use it with one or both sides set on sticks into "porch mode". Tie outs are shock corded and tied to the stakes with #9 yellow nylon string. Each tie out has a built in pocket to receive the shock poles so that I can adjust their location depending on what I need the tarp for.


Here's the corner detail with the pull out that allows me to form the ends into doors. You can see the sewn in patch to reinforce the pull out and a small "S" biner.




All the corners, tie out points and pull outs are backed and double reinforced, and are what some of my hammock buddies describe as "over sewn".


The ridge line is tightened via a Nite Ize Figure 9 cinch and is 50' long. I've never tried it over about 30', it works best at 23' to 25' between trees. I'm probably going to cut that line down some. The tarp tension is handled by Prusik knots and small "S"biners.


The shock poles just add a bit of structure where ever they're needed. I normally set them both to one end to give a little more space in the kitchen area and use the back for my bike.



And finally, it side by side with the largest tarp Hennessy makes for scale. She's a biggun'!



Thanks for letting me post all this stuff, I hope someone finds it helpful in building their kit. It's not canoe specific, but if it'll work for motorcycle saddle bags it should fit in my canoe just fine.

As always, if you have any questions, just hit me up.

Rusty