Hammock stand

[Guy Dotan]

Not a fine woodworking project, but I am very happy with it :-)
Made of construction 4x4 posts, custom steel braces and a bunch of galvanized bolts. Rough Sketchup drawing attached.

Hammock.jpg

[Adam Herman]

looks great, I have a couple hammocks on the shelf, and should build a stand as well. did you weld bar stock for the brackets or cut them out of plate? do you think a single plate bracket in a slot in the center of the 4x4 would be strong enough?

[Guy Dotan]

The brackets were cut from a steel sheet using an industrial bandsaw. There are 4 brackets, 2 on each side. I used an ironworker machine to punch matching 1/2" holes in each pair.
A single bracket is a slick idea, but I like the extra safety in 2 brackets. There's a large surface area that's holding the posts in addition to the strength of the bolts. The hammock seems to be holding very well and only the bottom lateral beam flexes when somebody is on it. It definitely needs more testing... so far it was tested up to about 200lb.

My last (commercial) hammock stand broke after 4 teenagers bounced on it... This one might be able to withstand a teenagers' attack :-)

[Eric DeSilva]

How thick was the plate you used? (Apologies if it is in the .skp, don't have access at work).

[Guy Dotan]

Measures about 2.6-2.7mm which corresponds to 12 gauge I believe.

[Eric DeSilva]

Thanks. Was thinking 1/8" plate, so that's pretty close... And I can cut it with my plasma cutter.

[Guy Dotan]

My original plan was to cut it with a plasma cutter, but I could not find a good way to run the tip against an edge to get a straight line. It was the first time I ever used a plasma cutter, so after a few failed attempts I switched to the bandsaw.

[Eric DeSilva]

I'll have more clean up to do and I'm not aiming for uber-precision with the plasma cutter. Bandsaw just seems like it would take a long time--and my metal bandsaw probably doesn't have the throat for this. I'm half tempted to use this as an excuse to get an Evolution TCT circular saw--I've got one of their little Rage chopsaws which works really well.