A portable hammock stand

[Hog On Ice]

A friend pointed out a new product that looked rather interesting - a portable hammock stand that only weights 1.53 kg including the hammock as near as I can tell. Here is the link: http://www.handyhammock.co.uk/

What I am wondering is if anyone has had any hands on experience with this stand and would be willing to share a brief review or first impressions of the hammock stand?

 

[Outdoordude]

I haven got one. On the hammock forums I'm sure there's a review on their about it. Also the guy that makes them is a member on hammock forums.

 

[tartanferret]

[video=youtube;wVr1c1xIilk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVr1c1xIilk[/video]

Skip to 2 minutes 12 seconds to see the handy hammock demonstration

 

[Elen Sentier]

Not hands-on but saw one a a festival I went to last autumn, at least I think it was the same kit. Looked quite strong and contained 4 teenagers for quite a while .

Just watched the vid, Ferret indeed! The festival kids seemed to get right so didn't have a real-life laugh.

 

[Hog On Ice]

mostly I am interested in the limitations of placement - to me it looks like flat ground is almost required - true? Also wondering how it feels to push in the anchor pins - again to me it looks like the pins need to have fairly soft ground - pushing into compacted ground (ex where cars have been parked often) looks like a problem? Plus hit one rock and the whole setup has to be moved?

wrt going to HF - no I won't do that for personal reasons

 

[mountainm]

Matt is selling them on UKhammocks now - I talked to the owner last year and he was looking for an investor to take over the idea. Seems like he's garnered some more funds. The biggest fault I can see is it's rather short.

 

[Hog On Ice]

well there was one item that the Handy Hammock did that I liked - the slanted support strut - so I changed my car portable hammock stand to use slanted poles to see if it would give me a reduced footprint for the hammock stand - this change was a success

here is an over all view of the hammock stand with a parachute fabric double hammock hanging on it for scale:

the main change that I made was to add a hinged baseplate so that the pole can rotate to different angles easily - the pole is a cut down top rail for a chain linked fence (galvanized steel tubing with one part necked down to fit into the next piece) - segmented into two pieces so as to fit in a car - the two segments slide together and are held together using a linchpin - here is a pic of the hinge :

here is an end on view of the hammock stand - the ground anchors used are The Claw (see theclaw.com for details) - the lines used are mostly DynaGlide (2mm dyneema throw line) UCRs:

the one exception to DynaGlide was the actual suspension for the hammock - there I used 2.8 mm Sypderline tied into an adjustable loop and with a continuous loop of Amsteel threaded into end of the hammock:

The measurements for this setup were as follows:

attachment point for the pole is 75 inches up the pole and 68 inches above the ground - angle of pole to ground was 65 degrees
distance between baseplates is 8 ft at the hinge point
distance between attachment points 13 ft 1 inch
distance from baseplate to anchor center point approx 47 inches (ranged from 46 to 50 inches)
distance between anchor center points width 53 inches length 14 feet 7 inches (great improvement in foot print)

The next setup I made was to put the hammock stand on a slope and see how it was to setup there and to see if there were and issues.

The setup was not too bad once I came up with a simple incline meter (protractor + weight on a string) - anyways the hammock stand worked just fine on a slope.

Here is the first setup where I set the angle of the poles to be 65 degree from the horizontal:

Here is a second setup where I "detuned" the pole angles - the uphill pole was at a 56 deg angle to horizontal and the down hill pole was at a 78 degree angle to horizontal - the hammock stand still worked well - note the ridgeline is horizontal, ground is high on left and low on right of the pic:

Here is a pic of my simple incline meter showing that the ridge line is horizontal:

anyways I am still happy with this change reducing the previous footprint and it looks like the pole angle is not overly sensitive

 

[Humpback]

HoI
Thanks for this post. I am struggling with a set of canoe poles (aluminum poles of 6'3" height each which are normally used together to move a canoe in shallow waters) which I set at vertical. The idea of angling the poles is one I had been thinking of and your hinge solution is great. I presently use a wooden base. I shall pin the base to the ground and make the 'cup' shape offset to hold the bottom of the pole in place.
Anyway, did you try other angles for your poles or just eyeball it and drop lucky?
Alan

 

[Hog On Ice]

first time around I just eyeballed it aiming for something like what the Handy Hammock struts used and yeah I think I got lucky but the second time around I tried some other angles including the last (56 degrees and 78 degrees) all of which seemed to be equally solid when I climbed in - I weigh about 230 lbs these days. I thought about making a cup shaped offset in the wooden base too but I felt that having something to "pin" the end of the pole in place was worth the extra hardware - seems to make it easier to raise the hammock stand into place by myself. The baseplates are pinned to the ground with a 12 inch spike the head of which you can see in the middle of the baseplate. The most important thing to get for this type of hammock stand is a very good ground anchor system - I tried several approaches and failed a bunch of times before I ended up with The Claw anchors. If you want to see some of the earlier (non-slanted) form of the hammock stand there is a brief video that SGT Rock put together:

[video=youtube;QDzcV9_9YMM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDzcV9_9YMM[/video]

 

[Humpback]

I saw this video on the SGT's site when first posted and have followed the thread there. I'll let you know how I get on.
Alan