How To Make A Cargo Net From Paracord

I beloved SCUBA diving! So much that in Feb of 2014 I spent a month on the isle of Roatan, Honduras getting my Divemaster Certification. While there, I spent my days studying, diving, and relaxing in my hammock. Of course after I left, I missed diving everyday the most. Notwithstanding, after the diving, the affair that I missed was relaxing in my hammock on a daily basis. Upon arriving habitation, I fabricated information technology a goal to somehow recreate my hammock that I'd left behind simply not forgotten. Once I figured out the full general idea, I decided to amend upon it past making my hammock with paracord.

This instructable is split into 5 main parts:

How to make a Hammock Loom (Step ane)
How to make a Netting Needle (Step 15)
How to load the Netting Needle (Step 19)
How to weave a Hammock (Step 24)
How to make Rope (Pace 32)
How to weave a Clew (Step 35)

Footstep 1: Tools and Materiel for Hammock Loom

Tools:

Jigsaw
Drill
Drill bit
Driver chip
Hex Wrench (for Threaded Insert)
Router
Diverse Roundover $.25
Planer

Material:

2x4'south
2 i/two" Grabber Screws

Step 2: Design and Plan

Subsequently a few dissimilar design ideas, I settled on this terminal design using 2x4's and wedges to secure the cantankerous members.

Measurements:

Uprights two - 2x4x6'
Cantankerous members two - 2x4x105"
Legs 4 - 2x4x15 i/2"
Legs iv - 2x4x14 i/two"

Step 3: Cut Crossmember Slots in Uprights

Cutting the slots for the 2x4' crossmembers using scroll saw. Center the cuts then there is just a little more than 1 1/2" on the face of the 2x4. Cut these slots 2 inches from the top and 5 1/2 inches from the lesser.

Stride iv: Cut Contour in Uprights

8 inches from the tiptop, cutting a round contour with a 1 inch radius. Continue cutting perpendicular to the confront till the middle portion of the upright is a square 1 1/2" past 1 1/2" cross sectional profile.

Step 5: Cut Legs

Cut 4 legs 15 1/2 inches and 4 legs xiv one/2 inches.

Step 6: Shine Out Uprights

Make the uprights round. You can do this by a sander (that would take forever), hand planer (this would too take a while), or a power planer. I used a weird obscure planer attachment that came with my Dremel. Suspension downwards the corners till you have a 1 1/2 inch diameter pole.

Step vii: Router Uprights

Using a 1/4 inch roundover fleck, soften all the corners of your uprights.

Footstep 8: Router Everything Else

Use a ane/4 inch roundover bit to router the legs and a 3/8 inch roundover bit to router the crossmembers.

Footstep 9: Cut Off the Pinnacle

Mark and cut ten inches beneath the elevation. This is so you will be able to remove the hammock bed from the loom once the hammock is finished.

Step 10: Install Threaded Inserts

These threaded inserts are so the hammock loom can be disassembled and reassembled. Follow the directions on the packaging of the threaded inserts for what drill chip size to employ for installation.

Mark the center of the upright. Drill a hole for the threaded insert. Using a hex primal, install the female portion of the insert into the base of the upright and install the male portion into the top. Tighten to top slice until the grain lines up.

Step 11: Attach Legs

Using a foursquare, countersink and adhere the legs. In all reality, the four fifteen 1/two inch legs attached are the just necessary legs, even so the four boosted legs assist when assembling the loom.

Step 12: Brand Wedges

Make wedges to secure the crossmembers in the uprights. These can exist whatever size that will hold the crossmembers securely. Mine turned out being 7x1 1/2 inches.

Stride 13: Marking Crossmembers

Using a record measure out, square, and a sharpie - marker the middle of the crossmembers in one foot increments. This will help with aligning the uprights with the crossmembers.

Step xiv: Loom Finished

Now assemble and pat yourself on the back. Y'all only finished the first part of your hammock!

Step 15: Tools and Materials for Netting Needle

Tools:

Spray Adhesive or Glue Stick (to mucilage pattern to wood)
Jigsaw
Drill Bit
Router
1/8" Roundover Fleck

Materials:

Oak (planed down to 3/eight of an inch)
Pattern

Footstep 16: Attach Pattern

Print and cut out pattern. Using spray agglutinative or a gum stick, attach the design to your piece of oak. (edit the length of the needle to hold more strands. I made my needle 8 inches longer than the pattern for a total length of sixteen inches)

Step 17: Cut Out the Netting Needle

Using a jigsaw, cut the outside off and the within out of your netting needle. On the inside of the needle drill a pigsty to facilitate the jigsaw blade.

Step 18: Finish Netting Needle

Finish the netting needle by using a 1/8 inch roundover bit and some final sanding. I didn't use whatsoever sort of cease on my needle but you tin if you wish. If you choose to use a terminate make certain you select something that won't rub off onto your hammock during the weaving procedure.

Step 19: How to Load the Netting Needle

To load the netting needle, accept whatsoever length of paracord you wish. I found that a length of 48 feet of paracord was enough to consummate 4 passes of the foreground strands (one-half of a color section shown - See Stride 24)

Loop the end around the tongue of the netting needle and secure in place using the force per unit area of the paracord
Flip over netting needle and loop slack end over tongue
Repeat until you are out of paracord

Step xx: Materials and Planning for Hammock

Paracord does stretch, but if you make this hammock out of paracord y'all will non notice hardly any stretching. That being said, you need to plan on how large of a hammock you want so you know how much paracord yous volition need to order. Throughout the rest of this instructable, I will refer to a strand of paracord in ii dissever means. The background strands (are wrapped around the loom - Meet Step 22) and the foreground strands (are anything brought into the hammock with the netting needle - See Step 24).

I ordered 5000 feet of paracord because I didn't desire to run out of whatsoever particular color and was alright with having leftovers.

***All of the following information are stats based on an 8 foot hammock bed***

***Use this info when planning the size and look of your hammock***

This hammock has 11 sections in the bed and is 35 inches wide
Each of the 11 sections contains about 300 feet of paracord
Each of the sections of this hammock is a little over iii inches wide
There are 188 strands of paracord running the length of the bed (100 background and 88 foreground)
Each foreground strand volition have 46 stitches resulting in a full of 4048 stitches through the whole bed
In total, the hammock weighs nearly 10 pounds which means it contains nearly 2500 feet of paracord

For this hammock you will demand:

3000 anxiety of paracord (I used near 2750 including scraps, so this will give yous that much more than wiggle room)
Scissors
Lighter

Step 21: Things to Remember

Whenever you cut paracord always melt the end to prevent fraying
When y'all introduce a strand into the hammock (background or foreground) tie the finish of the paracord to one of the uprights with a bowline knot
When working with a foreground strand, you will always be working in betwixt two groundwork strands

Step 22: Start the Background

To start your hammock, set the loom for the desired length of bed (this was set upwardly for an 8 foot bed measured using the marks on the crossmembers).

To start the background, tie a bowline and wrap the paracord around a adept corporeality. The third picture shows I wrapped around the whole thing 11 times. Later realizing this was a lot of paracord to manage, in the time to come I only wrapped the groundwork strands around the loom 4 to 8 times. Tie the other end to the loom using a clove hitch.

Step 23: Tie Boarder

The boarder consists of three passes of foreground strands. To create the showtime pass, tie a bowline between the two bottom most groundwork strands. Using an overhand knot, tie those two groundwork strands together. The foreground strand will ever stay between the ii groundwork strands. Making these knots uniform is the most important part of the hammock! These knots create the spacing that the residue of the hammock will take. If they are not evenly spaced, the whole hammock will be uneven. To aid in the placement of these knots, I fabricated marks 4 inches apart on the side of my netting needle with a sharpie. Have the fourth dimension to brand the first pass of knots as perfect as possible.

For the 2d pass, loop around the hammock loom upright and perform the same overhand knot bringing in the adjacent groundwork strand into the boarder.

For the third and final pass, perform the same series of over hand knots. Make certain that every knot as you lot go is tight before going on to the next knot.

Footstep 24: Triple Weave

The hammock is woven together by the triple weave pattern. If you recollect "Under Two, Over One" y'all have everything y'all demand to know to weave the rest of the hammock.

Necktie the loose cease of the foreground strand (from netting needle) to the hammock loom upright using a bowline (sorry that this is not shown here). Insert the netting needle under the ii background strands located under the bottom near loose background strand and higher up that bottom most loose background strand. Push the netting needle all the way through these three strands. Bring the netting needle back under the top strand that was just introduced into the weave. Perform this action twice between each set up of knots.

Continue this blueprint till your hammock is the size you prefer. Piece of work around the hammock in a clock wise movement or a counter clockwise motion. What ever direction yous determine on, stick with that management through the residue of the weave. Equally you can come across in this video, I worked in a counter-clockwise management.

Step 25: What Mistakes Expect Like

More than probable you will make mistakes through the process of working on your hammock. Information technology's important to exist able to recognize them early then that you don't demand to backtrack very far.

The beginning image shows the mistake of forgetting to go back under the groundwork thread that you introduced into the weave.

The second paradigm is the event of staying on the same side of the loom when finishing a laissez passer and non going around the back to perform the next laissez passer.

Step 26: Progress

These are a series of pictures showing the progress of the hammock bed through the weaving process.

Stride 27: Other Boarder - Function 1

The best function almost this boarder, is you already take an example correct in front of y'all! Have a expect at the other side of the hammock for reference.

Before you finish the terminal pass of the triple weave, necktie in enough paracord to add 3 lengths of background strand (40 feet should be enough to recoup for the knots that it'due south going to exist tying - mine is blueish) with a bowline
Finish last pass of the triple weave
Untie and remove the concluding background strand (bluish in my case - see concluding picture)

Step 28: Other Boarder - Part 2

Remember to reference the other side of the hammock for right placement of knots.

Load the twoscore pes blue background strand from previous step onto netting needle
Retie bowline
Make certain that the pattern as you weave the paracord dorsum through the loops is correct (I completed a whole pass with knots earlier I realized that I was weaving them backwards - meet side by side step)
Tie overhand knots post-obit the same design that was used on the offset boarder

Step 29: Other Boarder - Mistake

Don't be like me and complete a whole laissez passer earlier realizing that it was done wrong. Pay attending to what direction your netting needle is passing through the loops of the hammock.

Step 30: Potential Problems

One thing to remember is paracord is strong. With this design, there is a potential it could break the loom. Call up to pay attention to this because it could potentially cause one boarder to be shorter of the other. If you determine on a different loom design considering of this outcome delight share information technology in the comments!

Stride 31: Removal From the Loom

When removing the hammock from the loom, it's best and easiest to programme out how the clew (made in step 33) volition attach. I originally decided on 8 strands per end, but quickly decided that 12 would be more aesthetically pleasing.

Locate and mark the centre of the hammock (blue double nada-tie). You desire the hammock to be counterbalanced above all else. Count the top or bottom half of the loops going around the terminate of the hammock loom upright, and dissever that number equally by 6. Make information technology as fifty-fifty every bit possible because because more than than likely it volition not turn out to be an equal number. Split the loops, I used zip ties considering I had a bunch just lying around.

Do this for the other half on the same hammock loom upright and the other stop of the loom.

Remove the top crossmember.

Unscrew the top of the hammock loom uprights.

Slide the hammock bed off of the loom and marvel at your handiwork!

Step 32: Rope Making Jig

In social club to twist together paracord to make the rope for the clew, you will need to make a rope making jig.

I made mine using 2x2's and some chip wheel spokes I had lying around, but whatever sort of stiff wire will work.

This jig is designed to make upward to a 3 strand rope fifty-fifty though we will only exist making ane 2 strand rope at a time (See Step 31)

Using pliers, make loops at the end of the rods
Drill holes 4 inches apart in stationary slice of the jig slightly bigger than the rods
Drill matching holes in the rotary lath
Feed the rods through the stationary board
Make a 90 caste bend in the rods
Make another 90 degree curve an inch downwardly the rod
Insert the rotary board over the rods
Bend and cut the remaining rod so that information technology doesn't take hold of and cut your hand when rotating the jig (it hurts if you don't do this)

Pace 33: Two Strand Rope

You need to brand a lot of rope! I used 480 total feet of paracord to make both clews for this hammock. I originally tried to brand a rope with twoscore foot strands. This was a bad idea and really hard to handle. Afterwards that I realized it would be easiest to make rope with shorter strands.

You can make the clews as long as you'd like. Traditionally one clew volition be one-half the length of the bed thus doubling the length of the total hammock.

When making rope, cut 48 strands ten feet in length (cut these longer if you want longer clews). This volition effect in 12 ropes with 4 strands each (half dozen ropes per clew).

To brand rope:

Attach two strands using skid knots to the rope making jig (pictures 2-3)
Tie an over hand knot at the end of those two ropes (motion-picture show 4)
Rotate the rope making jig clockwise till the unabridged two-strand rope is twisted (picture 8)
Repeat with a secondary ii strand rope (pictures 9-xi)

There is another groovy instructable on how to brand rope written by Mrballeng and can exist constitute here.

Step 34: Four Strand Rope

To make the complete iv strand rope, use the same process as earlier with one important modify.

Instead of rotating the jig clockwise, rotate counter-clockwise.

Step 35: Weave the Clew

This is the virtually disruptive footstep, just once y'all sympathise the idea behind it, it makes a lot of sense.

Marking the middle of your rope with a sharpie and make the loop in your clew 4 inches long. Following the diagram in the fourth moving-picture show, open the twists in the rope to allow the respective rope to exist fed through the "middle" of the rope.

The numbers on the 4th picture stand for to the ropes in the clew.

Stride 36: Brand the Clew Even

Lay the clew on the basis. By untying the knots on the ends, shorten the length of the strands of the clew making them uniform. I decided that I liked the short tassels on the ends of the ropes so I left them in that location. You can just as easily cutting them off at the knot if y'all wish.

Step 37: Wrap Clew

The clew needs to exist wrapped. This will keep the ropes from separating and reduce potential clothing on the load begetting strands.

To wrap the clew:

Secure edges of clew with zip-ties to reduce movement of rope
Using xiv anxiety of paracord, tie an overhand knot
Secure the brusque tail of the overhand knot by tying a serial of overhand knots from one nil-necktie to the other
One time the wrap is complete crate a "needle" of sorts out of the tail of a zip-tie (cut of the block on the end)
Adhere the paracord to the zip-tie (I used a hot wire to melt through and connect the paracord to the zip-tie)
Feed the tail through virtually one-half of the wrap
Pull tight, cut and melt

Step 38: Adhere Clew to Hammock Bed

Using a sheet bend, attach the ends of the clew to the hammock bed. To make the hammock more than comfy, shorten the lengths of rope on the edges. This will form more than of a cup to keep you lot from falling out.

Stride 39: Terminal Thoughts

This has been 1 of the near time consuming and rewarding projects I've ever done. I started designing and making the loom almost a year agone. If you e'er determine to take the time to make a hammock yourself, please permit me know and share your results in the comments!

Be the Showtime to Share

Recommendations

Source: https://www.instructables.com/Paracord-Hammock-3/