Well hey there hammock aficionados. It's old Shug here. Let's think about this.
Hammock fabrics. And hammocks are different than a tents a tent you set up
and you crawl in and lay on a pad a hammock you're basically kind of wearing
it like a strange little suit that you're gonna sleep in all night you feel
that fabric is it denim is it cotton is it like a nice silk suit you're wearing
is it linen could it be seersucker is it wool are you wearing something made out
of burlap the feel the texture the strength let's take a breath sit down
and let's focus on these hammock fabrics I've heard of the word rip stop fabric
all my life and I got to tell you because I'm not a deep thinker
I never really stopped to think about what ripstop meant so rip stop is
usually a fabric like a nylon and in the weaving process what they do is take
some synthetic type fibers and take that first fabric and they weave these fibers
through it so that's if you ever really take a close look at a lot of rip stuff
you'll see it's got this little checkity pattern some of them now have these
diamond patterns that might be up to like to 1/16 of an inch to an eighth of
an inch so if that fabric tears that weaker fabric like a nylon or whatever
that may be these threads in essence stop that tear from happening so it
stops the RIP thus the name rip stop it's got a very high strength-to-weight
ratio it's a strong fabric it's breathable and that's what most hammocks
are made off this is my war bond at Eldorado right here and it is a 70d rip
stop nylon and a lot of fabrics have these have these names mono light hyper
D dream tex air weave these are just different mills or suppliers or people
to manufacture and given a cool name like my real name Shawn but I like to
call myself sugar ripstop I find a 70 D just to be comfortable it's got enough
stretch you know but not too much what does denier mean when you see that
D 70d 110 D 40 D 30 D what does that D stand for dono
so denier is a unit measurement which describes linear mass
density in a given material basically what they say is one strand of silk
isn't denier one human hair an average hair is about 20 denier so you put all
these denier orden ears or dinners together that is I guess that's the unit
mass density I like to break it down that a 7 engineer is pretty strong so
when you order a hammock like let's say dream taxon war bonnet or you go to
somebody else's site you see they have a 40 denier and this this goes for tarps 2
or a 20 denier or a 30 denier the lower you go 20 is a much lighter material you
know that those some of the thicker materials on a hammock don't have as
much stretch like this 7 did here just a little bit again this comes down to you
it's like you like to wear your shirts tight
do you like a loose shirt do you like your pants to be skinny jeans like that
athletic cut rear you got those huge thighs it's really a personal preference
is if you become an avid Hammacher eventually you're probably going to go
to the one with cottage manufacturers like hammock gear or war bonnet dutch
wear dream hammock all these people that that make custom hammocks and they're
gonna give you some choices of fabric I'm assuming that maybe some of you are
gonna want to DIY meaning make your own hammock a lot of people love doing that
and I recommend it it's not too hard to do but if you make a hammock you know
you're gonna go somewhere and buy material probably a rip stop all right
and somewhere it's gonna come up they'll go you want calendars or uncalibrated
calendared mean basically calendered is a is a process where they take a big
piece of nylon they fold it in on itself and they run it through a machine in the
mill that has these huge hot rollers and it sort of presses the fabric is what it
does so when you unfold it there's a shiny side and there's kind of a matte
finish side the sides that are folded in or matte and the outside will be shiny
pushes all those little gaps together a lot of people use calendar material
for making sleeping bags and top quilts and under quilts because really it's
down proof so because the material has been kind of hot pressed it's harder for
those little down feathers to escape give us the fabric a little bit more
wind resistance and if it Sun calendared that's just fine to make a hammock out
of it just means it doesn't have that process a little bit more wind will cut
through it you know which would be probably great for the summer especially
if you live down in one of those hot states like Texas or something to give
yourself a little breeze so that's basically what calendared means and i'm
calendered is just the opposite meaning it has not gone through that hot press
process yeah hey everybody this hot press process here talking to you I love
my hammock ear side do I fall into it and I fall into a deep slumber
I don't ever count the number like 70 or 40 D I just get on into it and enjoy my
hammock don't you see so nylon if you don't know is a synthetic material I
think it was invented in the 1930s sometimes and that's the word we hear
the most in our camping gear you hear the word nylon a lot but when you start
getting into the words you're gonna see a lot in hammocks nylon taffeta that's a
combination of those two fabrics taffeta can be made out of wool so that's a
that's an organic natural material but you combine that with the nylon now
taffeta can be made out of wool or rayon or silk or nylon that's happiness when I
have my debutante ball I had my gown made out of taffeta it's a shiny
somewhat crinkly material with a soft and taffeta now let's just talk about a
hammock let's start with an e no because a lot of you have them there they're
readily available a lot of stores so if you get an e no look at it online or go
to their site you're gonna see that it's made out of a 70 D high tenacity taffeta
what up in the pasture it's high tenacity taffeta here yeah feel me touch
me yeah but don't talk to me so basically what high tenacity taffeta is
it's a breathable nylon you're gonna look at some hammocks and see this 210
tea so yeah 210 tea is like a 70d and it could also be what you call a 1.9 when
you start seeing some of these fabrics like a hyper 1.9 or a ripstop 1.9 we're
talking thread count here everybody we're talking wait are you confused I am
now another hammock you'll see on Amazon or different places and people ask me
about is called the bare butt hammock they're made out of a 210 tee fabric but
as far as I know it's a 75 d so you look at a hennessy hammock all right they got
a lot of kinds well I'm just gonna pick the Hennessy expedition made of a 70d
nylon all right here's another hammock I don't have one it's called a kamek we'll
just talk about their kamek Rou that hammock is made out of a high tenacity
lunar wave diamond weave ripstop nylon actually I think the diamond grid
they're talking about has a little less stretch it still gets gonna give a
little bit but it's not one of these ones you get into stretch is way down um
it's a treated DWR fabric DWR means durable water repellent so that fabric
has been treated with something that doesn't make it waterproof it makes the
water kind of beat up and roll off so there's a hammock out on the market
called a hummingbird hammock it really packs down about that small I don't own
one and it is made out of a fabric that's super lightweight it's a P ia
4 4 7 8 parachute material what it's kind of a thin material got a tensile
strength of about 50 pounds per square inch this is my personal opinion I don't
want to risk that my hammock is gonna bust or fall and hit the ground after
all that work I put into walking out there when it's time to slumber down man
that's what I look forward to and I want to feel safe in it so this is a big
consideration with your hammock fabrics look at the weights and what the weight
will bear go to each manufacturer look under their specs see what the material
is and see what the weight bearing is because you'll see a lot of hammocks
particularly on Amazon or it'll say parachute material no parachute
materials got a lot of range when they say parachute material in the hammocks
are usually talking about a nylon and they don't mean rip stop so a lot of
times parachute material does not mean that it has the rip stop
grids in there it's a strong nylon but it doesn't have those threads to stop
the rip so to speak you know they tried to call it stop the rip nylon no one
liked it rip stop another popular hammock out there is the
Grand Trunk series of hammocks with the steeped or beater Pro and all of that so
most of their hammocks are the 210 T which is pretty much the same as a 70d
70 denier nylon so even like that a mock hammock I was in in the very beginning
of the video that big 90-degree hammock that's a 70 T nylon but if I feel that
nylon compared to this nylon they feel very different be a good moment to jump
back to that double layer hammock if you're using the double layer most
people put the heavier layer let's say a 1.9 on the outside and let's say
something like a 1.1 mono light or whatever on the inside you can hold more
weight with two layers if you put a 2.2 hex 70 on the outside and a 1.9 ripstop
on the inside that's gonna hold a person that's about 600 pounds that's pretty
impressive you know one of the best places to do get fabric buy fabric and
and read about some descriptions of fabric is a place called rip stop by the
roll if you go to a site and you look at a particular fabric you can go and get
explanations that fabric how it's made do they make it what the weave is what
sort of fabrics they're putting together what the strength the weight ratio is
what the denier is on and on and on and on they'll even tell you what it's good
for make it maybe it's just stuff sacks or sleeping bags I'll let you know if
it's good for a hammock now I'm gonna put the link for rip stop by the rolls
hammock fabric comparison chart and below in this description box and you
can look at each fabric click on it go see what the fabrics made of it gives
the weight and there's also another box when you get down below and it'll show
you like say you want to make a double there give you all the great options for
which layer to be outside which layer to be inside and what weight those two will
hold together so different Mills are going to make different grades of this
fabric as far as I can tell but here's some other hammock fabrics that are
available and you and look at these a trip stop by the
roll you get your 1.0 hyper D also they have your 1.0 mono light you've also got
your 1.1 ripstop good for about 200 pounds they have a 1.3 MTN XL hybrid
material it's a new material supposed to be really strong and comfortable I think
it's good to 275 pounds they also have a 1.7 in that MTN and that has just single
weight will hold up to 400 pounds so apparently it's a really strong fabric
and again you don't have to worry about any of these fabrics unless you start
ordering hammocks from these cottage vendors that give you the choices
sometimes it's easier not to have a choice back in my day kids hammock in
was a lot easier there was less choices we didn't have as many choices there was
chocolate and vanilla it goes on and on the choices are limitless
unlimited they go on and on ad infinitum forever into infinity I feel for you I
feel for you now you go to Dutch where gear calm he's gonna give you basically
choices a hex on and I think he has it in one point zero one point six and a
two point four which is the strongest so each manufacturer is going to give you
these different choices Arrowhead gives you some air wave as a choice for some
hammocks or a 1.1 30 D that they use in some of their hammocks now if you go to
hammock gear calm and get one of their hammocks I think they're using pretty
much for most of their stuff a forty D ripstop nylon but each one different
stretch different strengths different feel it's just like clothes you're
wearing your hammock though this was kind of probably I didn't even want to
do it every time to do it was now during this pandemic maybe you
that's so bored that's why it's nobody wants to talk about it it's a dirty
little secret these hammock fabrics I don't even want
to talk about it now I feel dirty I would like for you to
know that it's not a power line behind me but it is a phone line
I'd like to say it's been a long time since I've done that and I liked it