10 things to do with a wool blanket #7 Make a hammock

Description

In this video I show you how to make your self a hammock out of your wool blanket. The process is very simple and the hammock is very warm and very comfortable!

Tags: Bushcraft,Bushcraft Skills,Wilderness Skills,Outdooors,Hiking,Camping,Survival,Survival Skills,woodcraft,wood craft,Wool (Fiber),Hammock,Blanket

Video Transcription

five minutes

okay everyone so come on today to finally get some more videos done on the 10th exude a wool blanket series really sorry that has taken so long to do this the honest truth is I just kept forgetting to do it so today what we're looking at is how to turn your wool blanket into a hammock so the things we'll need for that obviously we need a blanket and then I have also got some cordage now this cordage that I'm using is pre-stretched cordage so that means it's not gonna pull and stretch once this is up now this is little limits a hammock it's going to take your full weight 550 paracord is useless for this it's got way way too much stretch in it as you get if you do the same thing with 550 paracord as you get in it the whole thing is just gonna drop down and you just basically lying on the floor so you need something like this is I'm not entirely sure what kind of cord as this is but it's some kind of a marine cord which doesn't stretch that is really really important non-stretch cordage a little bit more expensive but I think it's far more versatile so let's crack on and see how we do this so this is really simple to do in your initial stage of this starts very similarly to how we do the the wool blanket sure it said that I'm not folding this in half put the whole blanket spread out so I'm going to be working at opposite corners so the corners if you use quality' corner you've got more length in it so this is quite a short blanket it's probably a little bit too short than you'd really want for a wool blanket for most people but I'm quite a short guy so it just just fine for me so I'm going to prepare my cordage use then what I want to do is I want to start pleating this ever so slightly to give it a little bit of grip to fancy that will do the trick it's gonna open up slightly as I come to do it then I'm gonna take my cordage underneath it

myself plenty of slack to work with and make sure you get it firing off in because we're going to want to fold this over shortly

pulling it tight I sort of tightiy get this the better then fold it over then go over itself so this is why it's important to give yourself you know so like I haven't given myself enough there loosen that real tight the careful you're pulling it tight because it does kink and you can actually loosen it by doing that just be wary of it then once I've done that I'm gonna stick it through so underneath one more time and then straight back on itself again pull that as tight as you can and the more surface area of the wall you can cover with the cordage the better its grip is gonna be so this all works of friction to hold it in place so you end up with something like this then what I'm gonna do from the back and then gonna tie it off so the the piece that's gonna go into the tree so I'm just good tie it off using a couple of half hitches that easy to undo as more than sterling off for what we're doing and then need to repeat this process but the opposite caller so I'm gonna go ahead and do that and then we're just going to swing up to the tree and we should be good to go but I'll take you through the whole process but one thing that I would do first I've not pre cut the cord is that's generally not a good idea I've been sure that I've got enough to go around some big big trees so what I'm going to do is I'm actually gonna measure this out first before doing the other side to make sure that I've got enough to go around both if you pre-cut it you could we could then end up kind of out in the woods and realize that actually you haven't got thin enough trees or you haven't buddy they're close enough together and you could end up with not enough cordage

okay should be enough there okay ready to do the next side okay we're ready now to start lashing this up to the tree so I'm gonna bring it bring the cord roughly to about shoulder level I'm going to bring this line kit up by hand to stop it sagging so what the heck now I want it this should be too much stretching this I'm just going to take the cord back around the tree to get central what tight and then we're just gonna put try to keep it level hardest part for this stuff for me is around the trees odds a little bit too short on this one so we go go straight in with some half hitches so it tells you getting into this hammock it's just like getting into a usual kind of shop-bought hammock with a little bit more difficulty so what I'm going to do is I'm actually gonna open it out sit onto it all onto one side because that's the way I'm likely to fall because I'm going to lean back check the weight you don't want to live falling down in this and then find that your knots are not secure and then in you get and the great thing about this hammock is you can also use it that's it also as a blanket so I can get completely in there and be relatively warm this is really good the only difference is your prom with this hammock is I don't have much room to move in it it's difficult to get down on your side but I can kind of I can get comfortable

I'm a back sleeper anyway yeah it's really comfortable if I had a bigger blanket I'd be able to spread this out even more and using the same technique as we used on the cloak coat or blanket thing you can actually make this kind of a look to give you a little bit more security so you're less likely to fall out of it it's very very comfortable and a good advantage of this is because it's wool you're going to lose less heat from the underside all you've got air circulation around here you're gonna lose a bit of heat through the bottom but it's not compressing underneath so your back so will remain warmer and it really is as simple as that it's very very comfortable

obviously I'd always choose a proper hammock to camp over it to sleep in but in the summer months especially if you're out doing like some sort of nocturnal animal watching or whatever it's ideal just to get a few hours shut-eye in you have to be careful because it's pretty easy to wear actually it's not as easy I thought but you know you can roll out of this there's a very definite sort of taut taut point through the center of it but if you get dead center on it absolutely fine I'm really comfortable here and you know what it's great it's easier than it's like what's the way to phrase this it's not like than carrying a normal hammer obviously Norma hammocks are much much lighter wool blankets pretty heavy but you know I can use this as a seat through the day or jumper through the day I'm walking out lick the felt rather and then I can get into it at night if I need to and if you're just kind of doing the wall blanket camps which I've seen a few people doing they're pretty popular if you can't find somewhere suitable and dry to put your your roll mat down but you have got three use you can just substitute it and turn it into a hammock and it's pretty comfortable to just sit in here it talked about what ten minutes to put up and that's with filming it so pretty pretty comfortable yeah I really like this method it's good it's really good and if you've got a big you can get the big queen-size blankets the pretty amazing hammocks to sit in but ah it is very comfortable it's more like a sort of really primitive jungle hammock I don't want to move now yeah thank you all for watching please like share subscribe comment let me know what you thought of the video what you thought the technique I know there were different techniques for doing this this is just my preferred one if people want to see the other techniques for doing this I will see what I can do they're a little bit different a little bit more involved I've done this one because it's the nice easy simple one and you know you've got a blanket to sit it's great we just chilling out in the woods in winter so yeah Cheers just watching guys you