Jacketed Fire Hose Hammock 2.0

Look at this beautiful hammock made by a keeper at Binghamton Zoo using my directions. And look at the free-styling she did with the design!

Six runners! Four full-width tabs! Jacketed fire hose! Soft for butts and no bolts or nuts.

She did say that she may end up using some hardware to secure things and that's cool, too. We discussed maybe just doing the ends, or screwing them down to lengths of wood which would still be a lot lighter than a full on traditional hammock.

I was always concerned that the jacketed fire hose would be too flexible for this style of hammock because there's only one layer of rubber on the inside and then the polypropylene or nylon fabric "jacket" on the outside, but Jess proved me wrong. I had to make one myself, except I used rubber tabs because I've got so much laying around and they do provide more lateral strength.

Lately I've been placing tabs really close to the ends of the hammock so they aren't just flapping around all the time. After cutting all the pieces it's the usual assembly process of folding tabs in half and inserting them into the slots.

I was pleasantly surprised by how tight everything ended up being, though there was noticeably a little more flexibility from the runners. Personally I think only using rubber hose tabs would make sure this hammock doesn't fall apart, especially because of that extra rubber-on-rubber friction that was making the horrible squeaking sounds that made everyone in the break room cringe as I took these pictures.