Recommend me a karabiner

[Highbinder]

Hello guys,

I've been buying bits and bobs to upgrade my hammock suspension system, including four Nano 23 karabiners. First impressions is that they're great and definately very light weight. I had earmarked two of them to go through the stitched channel at the end of my hammock but they're, well, not big enough. Can anyone recommend me a larger karabiner that is also of reasonable weight? The karabiners I saw in Tiso all weighed a proverbial ton.

Are there biners that have the gate opening reversed, so the hindge is on the wide side of the pear shape? My thinking is if I can attach the biner directly through the loop it means I can use it to easily attach and detatch my structural ridgeline as well as have my descender rings directly on the biner for my webbing adjustment.

 

[Graham_S]

I tried the Karabiner in the channel thing and found I didn't like it.
I ended up with small slings in there looped into a larks foot.
The Karabiner went through that instead.

 

[Highbinder]

I guess I can always rig it up with a continuous loop of amsteel in a larks head but I quite like the idea of a karabiner. I was thinking about something like this as it seems to have the right kind of shape but it's hard to find sizes/dimensions of karabiners online!

It just occured to me, could I use those little stitched lengths of webbing they sell in climbing shops that are similiar to those found on the dual karabiners. As you can see I don't know the technical name. If I can run one of those through the channel I can just feed the nano 23 through each end of that?

/e: Like the 'quickdraw' sling, such as something from here

 

[Teepee]

That would work quite well, but would increase the minimum distance between trees.

I'd be tempted to cut a 60 up and use it for both ends, re-sewing the webbing together again into short loops, or swap the slings for some cord and either knot it or splice it. You could use lighter,smaller krabs then. Just a suggestion though.

 

[Highbinder]

Well Teepee from what I've seen a pair of these would work well, and they come in 11cm length as well as the 17cm shown there, and are cheap enough to buy and try out. Doubt they weigh much and would mean I could just use the nano 23s I already have.

Thread one of those through the channel, create a loop with the biner and hook everything on from there, sound reasonable?

 

[Teepee]

Sorry Highbinder, I just looked at the length of that quickdraw sling and I reckon its a good idea.

 

[Teepee]

I'd thought about doing something along those lines myself, but decided I wanted to be able to open the channel up for bivying, so I went with continuous adjustable loops threaded through the channel, the loops then attach to the loops in the tree huggers with a soft shackle. This leaves me with no drip stop, but to be honest, Ive never had much water come down my lines, even in torrential rain.

For ease of use I think you have it nailed.

How are you attaching to the tree from the krab HB?

 

[Highbinder]

I shall place an order tomorrow in that case

I bought a bunch of stuff from Arrowhead Equipment but it has yet to arrive. When I placed the order they were out of cinch buckles but a few days after they were back in stock, doh! I ordered two sets of descender rings and two 15' lengths of 1" wide webbing. 15 foot is maybe over kill but I'm not too concerned about excess weight, plus the last time I went out I really struggled with the thick girthed trees I chose. I also bought a SRL whoopie string which I'm excited to try out

Not too concerned about bivvying, I've yet to 'go to ground' (as I am a n00b!) but I figure I could always take the biners out the channels - it's a pain to rethread, especially cordage, but only takes 15 minutes tops.

I was very very tempted to with a set of whoopie slings and 2" tree huggers but I decided on the webbing for ease of use, especially as I'll be taking my hammock across Europe the coming year, and I like the idea of using the webbing to hang between a tree and my car

Either way it beats the standard DD webbing which I've been using (tying each end off with a marlen spike hitch).

Now all I have to worry about is insulation. I've been mulling over the idea of trying to use two CCF pads but rather than side to side using them as a cross shape, so one full length pad and one shorter one perpendicular to the first to insulate my shoulders.

 

[Highbinder]

The stuff from AHE arrived today but I hadn't ordered the climbing slings so I had to come up with a new solution;

Pic on the left shows the luvly nano 23s tree-end and the 1" webbing I got (LOL 15' is a lot!), much much easier to put up than the marlen spike hitches I'd been using on the stock DD suspension

Pic on the right shows the suspension. The green webbing forms a loop through the hammock's channel with a double fishermans' bend to lock it. Which inturn runs to the biner which has the descender rings (wow easy to adjust) locked off with a slippery half hitch. The bright green cord is my SRL and with the biners is dead easy to clip on and off. The black cord is a little net bag I use to dump stuff in.

Now I have that sorted all I need are a couple of utility biners to clip the bugnet onto the ridgeline!

What'd'ya think, guys?