The traditional zookeeper hammock is woven with perpendicular lengths of hose with their ends fastened by nuts, bolts, and washers. Being made of two layers of industrial hose and lots of metal hardware means heavy furniture that never gets taken down for cleaning or repair. Here's another way that's just as strong.
We're going to cut little strips out of the hose to fabricate notches and slots to fit together pieces of hose like they're Tinker Toys or Lincoln Logs. The only tools we need are a sharp knife and a marker.
Select your length and width. I cut off a chunk about 3 feet long and used it as a ruler to cut two more pieces. The yellow hose lays flat at about 8 inches so this hammock with three strips will be about 2 feet wide. These will be our "runners" that will be the visible part of our finished hammock.
For the "tab" pieces I'm using red 2 1/2 inch diameter hose. You could use the same size as the runners because the same principles apply. I like using the narrower widths if I can to save weight.
Cut small pieces of the tab hose so that they will overlap at least 1 inch on either side of two runners. Mark where the overlap is on the red hose so we know where to cut our notches. We'll be cutting into them about 3/4 of an inch at most. The space between the notches has to be wider than the width of half a tab..
I'm right handed so when I'm cutting I cut closest to my left hand since that's holding the hose and steadying it for my knife. So to cut the notch first I cut to the right of the mark, slide my hand a little left, then cut on the left of the mark. To finish the notch I turn the knife sideways at the bottom of the cut and saw a little more to cut out the scrap.
For your first hammock I would recommend making your notches wider to give yourself some wiggle room for easier assembly.
Put the tab piece back over the runners and mark on the runners where the innermost part of the notches are. Take away the tab piece and the hose in between the marks on the runners is what we will remove. These will be shallow cuts to create a slot where the red tab pieces can slip in.
You're only trying to expose the inside of the hose and not cutting a deep notch like before. I have tried just cutting straight into the side, but it's difficult to cut straight line and if there's too much material on the runners the final hammock will bunch up when we insert the tabs.
Here you can see how I've laid out my tabs. At the top and bottom are longer continuous tabs to show a way to reinforce your hammock design for longer widths or to make it more durable for animals like bears, big cats, and great apes who are not only heavier but more likely to mess with your creation. For smaller animals you can make the whole hammock with the smaller tabs using the same slots.
Now the fun part! Fold those tabs in half and tuck them into the slots of the runners. This is why we only cut the notches about 3/4 inch deep. I try to keep the slots wider than a tab folded in half so it's easier to insert the tabs into the runners. Also, shorter tabs make them less flexible and more difficult for an animal to pull out (though harder for us to assemble).
For the continuous tabs, yeah, it can get tough. Start from the center runners of the hammock then work your way to each side.
If you're making an especially wide hammock I definitely recommend cutting the notches on continuous tabs extra wide for assembly purposes. The benefit of making a reinforced hammock like this is that instead of the weight being distributed just side-to-side from runner to runner with the small tabs, these long tabs will tie every runner to each other preventing pieces from pulling apart.
In the end you can see how the final product looks like the runners only picture from the beginning. Nice, flat, parallel slats that scrub with ease, don't trap debris and feces, and allow for ropes to be strung through any of the holes or length of the runners. Or drill holes for fastening points like quick links or carabineers. Or directly attach them to a frame with screws. Or leave it as is and make a doormat.
Here's the hammock in use!
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