The Hobo Hammock! [ 1915 skill - Easy and Cheap! ]

and that's what it looks like hello welcome to Waypoint survival today I'm going to show you how to make the hobo hammock stay tuned to make this project you're going to need three simple things first of all you're going to need your wool blanket next you need about 40 to 50 ft of heavy duty rope this is/ inch you want a rope that's pretty grippy so something like a sisle rope will work just fine and you're going to need a couple of fairly thick sticks these are an inch and a half or so in diameter and you're going to Whittle or carve some notches in both ends of these sticks you can see what that looks like again that's both ends and they need to be pretty strong and preferably dried hardwood if you can get it you don't want something that's too flexible one of the first things we need to do is find a couple of trees that are between 8 and 10t apart again if you're a normalized person I'm around 6 foot so I need enough room that I can lay between the trees so we're going to start with this one right here we're going to go over to this tree here we're going to start over here again as I said on that first tree using this rope and I'm just going to use a simple granny knot a couple of half Ines uh there's all kinds of different things you can use for this but I'm just going to go really simple because this is going to hold really well now notice that this is only about 2 feet off the ground then we take the rest of the Rope we go to the next tree and we want to go around it three times and if you want you can go underneath it to help secure it all right there we have three complete turns now we take the Rope we go back over here to the tree we want to do the same thing of course we can adjust this rope a little bit this way like this and we don't want this to be really tight we need to have some sag in it but they need to be about even try to keep these two ropes at the same plane again we're going to go around it three times now this right here is a 40ft rope so it works really good for this and then we're again we're just going to do a simple couple of half inches does not have to be fancy but we want it to be tight enough again use whatever knots you're comfortable with the next thing we're going to do is we're going to install our spreader sticks now remember keep keep in mind how long you are you don't want this to be under your feet and this under your head that will be very uncomfortable so keep this spread out to the ends it should look something like this when you're done now for this next stage you need to open up your blanket might get a little dirty on the ground but that's okay you want to make sure and open it up lengthwise kind of spread it out then you're going to come from the bottom you're going to come up over like this until it covers at least half to a third of your rope so again coming up from the bottom and over the one rope now this part can get a little fiddly so you got to be be careful you want to come over to this side this is the one that we put on first you want to come and you want to grab the bottom of this and you want to pull this tight not so tight that it unwraps from that end you want to get this fairly taut and wrap that over now if your Blanket's wide enough that it will go all the way over both sides that's even better that's going to give you a better grip however the key thing to remember is make sure that it overlaps at least by a third what you're looking for the ropes will hold it on the sides and the blanket because of the fibers of the wool will grab on and lock in held together by your weight this is very similar to what people were taught years ago in the Boy Scouts for putting together a stretcher very same principle and of course this dates quite a few years ago I learned this from a book from 1915 getting into it you got to be kind of careful remember it's not fastened with anything if you did want to bring a couple of of horse blanket pins or safety pins you could do that that would kind of hold it from shifting around a little bit more but your weight should hold it together now when you get in this is why you don't want it too far off the ground you want to be able to climb over top of it sit down and then lay in it gently remember you don't want to horse around on this blanket you don't want to to jerk and move and twist this is something that's simple it's easy it's an expensive but again you're not talking about a high dollar hammock here this is something that you would use in weather that was not inclement of course you could always put a tarp over top of this to make a more complete weatherproof type camping Affair but what we're going to do right now is just for sleeping at night and that's what it looks like this is actually really secure and quite comfortable again you want to make sure that your spreader bars are a little wider than your shoulders you're still going to get a little bit of rope on the sides but again you can snuggle in Cross Your Arms put your hat over your head you could get a pretty good night's rest and uh yeah it's uh pretty sturdy I'm not the littlest hobo as you can tell but uh this is holding my weight really really fine and this is a very old blanket it's an old rope there's nothing fancy about it it's a very very simple project so here you can get a better idea of what it looks like you can see the spreader bars on both ends and again you want to make sure that it's got enough of a hang to it a little bit of a sway there in the ropes otherwise you won't be able to put the spreader bars in if you get those ropes too tight this is is a really fun and interesting project and after you put it up two or three times you get a really good feel for how much hang supposed to be in the Rope how wide you want your spreaders of course you can adjust those they're just sticks and you could carry them with you you could roll it up in your blanket if you wish but it's a lightweight simple way to put up a hammock and again because it uses those multi-use items you can do this in multiple ways multiple configurations and you don't even have to carry the sticks really all you need is the rope and your wool blanket which you should have with you anyway here's one more shot of how much hang is in the rope from tree to tree so that you make sure you don't get that too tight of course the tighter you get it the better you're going to sleep so again you'll have to put this up a couple times to get a good feel for it this is James Bender for Waypoint survival if you like this video please give it a thumbs up also make sure and check out the links in the description box below just under the more button while you're down there you'll also find our Waypoint survival.com link and this is where you can sign up to take survival and Bushcraft classes here at our beautiful training facility in Southern Ohio and if you haven't already done so please subscribe to the channel we'd really appreciate it and when you do subscribe make sure and press that Bell button so that you can stay notified of all of our upcoming videos and we'll talk to you next [Music] [Applause] [Music] time

Channel: WayPoint Survival

Views: 145,373

Keywords: Hobo Hammock DIY, Camping Survival Skills, Lightweight Camping Gear, Historical Camping Techniques, DIY Tarp Shelter, Outdoor Adventure Essentials, The Hobo Hammock, Hobo camping

Id: IArYYIxTWmA

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024