Custom Soft Shackle + Whoopie Sling + Poncho makes Hammock

Description

Recently I've been experimenting with alternate ways to hang our PSS Series of Ponchos as hammocks. In this video I use Soft Shackles in place of carabiners. I even developed a custom Soft Shackle for use with our PSS Series. The video shows how it is all set up and some details about the Soft Shackle. The Ponchos make for great hammocks and tarps too. Our PSS Series was developed as survival gear and has many other uses besides a poncho. My testing was during a backpack trip into the San Rafael River Gorge. Check out our web page here HTTP: //wildernessinnovation.com

Tags: Soft Shackle,carabiner,whoopie sling,dyneema,amsteel,sampson rope,hammock,poncho,survival gear,sleeping gear,outdoors,bushcraft

Video Transcription

well here's my camp along the San Rafael River and I got it I pushed on in I want to get farther in last night so it was it was way dark time I got here and it's a beautiful spot right here kind of got some cottonwoods I'm in and it makes a nice spot for a camp I read my Whoopie sling I've got soft shackles that I'm using in place of carabiners I'm using my poncho made from the real tree extra and of course the I've got a different kind of soft shackle on this side but it's the Whoopie sling just the same this is a nice little camp right here not to bring Shawn up here my wife and let her try it out it's a nice little hike in it's beautiful so this is my multi-purpose gear bag that I use for the purpose of backpack

I got a multi panel on here and everything so I got extra gear this is my geigerrig water hydration deal that's a pressurized system in my past number times out here I've been experimenting with different ways to hang our poncho this this time around I'm using a soft shackle which that this right here takes the place of a carabiner it's made out of Dyneema cord so it's a soft shackle and a Whoopie sling and then I'm using a Marlinspike type deal right here to connect the Whoopie sling to the soft shackle so anyway the reason the reason I was looking at go I like the carabiners because my nuts nice and slick you know just thread the carabiner through the sleeve on the end of your poncho and click it into a tree strap or a Whoopie sling on you and you're all strung up you're good to go but the thing I didn't like about the carabiners which is okay but they're heavy for one and two they're bulky they take so you got to have a pretty good size when in order to get draw the material here on one of our Poncho's when you send it up like a hammock so I decided to mess around with the with the soft shackles that way I could have a lighter weight and and they're you know very very little bulk so it's kind of the best of both worlds so I've been experimenting a little bit so a regular soft shackle is like this deal right here and I've got some of my customized soft shackles hanging off of it and I've got a couple styles this one has a little zipper type deal so you see the when you pull on this the loop gets bigger we've got like a diamond knot on the end here and that watches into there so basically that knot right here is through that hole once you draw it up it can't pull apart this little zipper cord here just makes it easy to undo it so I put this up through here and then I basically just work the slack so as I work that up there there we are now we're up there tight we're up there tight now this can't come off so anyway so that's a regular soft shackle and that's the size that we need so I gotta have enough length I can gather it all in there and get at my ends in order to close this thing so it's got to be that size just even work right so one of the dilemmas of using a soft shackle with our Poncho's is sliding through five foot of sleeve I got a slide to five foot a sleeve well I need more length than just a regular soft shackle would have so I made up a soft shackle it's got extra long tail on it and and that way with this extra long tail I've got I've got enough distance where I can get through it I can even do it HD poncho which is harder to gather that because heavier material but I can use this even on a HD poncho so what I've done is I've gone through right here I've gone through my sleeve on my poncho come out this is the soft shackle this other part up here so now I'm disconnected from my Whoopie sling which is here the end of my soft shell here now I could put this I could put this loop right through here in fact I might I might wind up doing that I don't know but I just thought since I had this aluminum tube here that could be like a mark Marlinspike or something and and it works fine so anyway so now I just put that loop through there show that through there so now I've got kind of a Marlinspike type deal the connects the two and I'm good to go if I don't use this I mean it just hang down there not a big deal so I'm not decided totally if this is what I like to do or not but it's there so here's another issue right here and that is when I I unzip this thing to get my diamond knot in and out of there in order to in order to work this back up so it closes my in order to close this loop in other words I've got to start back here and push it up like that to get that to disappear which normally in a soft shackle that is not an issue it's not a problem the problem we have with that it's not a terrible problem kind of depends on how heavier poncho material is really but the problem is when we're doing this through our poncho to convert to a hammock when I go like this the hammock material covers all of this right here all this stuff here is all inside the sleeve so how do i how do I get in there and work all that out of there now it I've been able to do it so it's not like you can't but it's not as easy as just doing it like this where you have easy access all the way around I thought well is there a better way so actually there is and some of these some of these I've been another type of here's another type of closure on the end right here this is a edwards enhanced design so what you're doing here is you've got a berry all the way through here which you know which that's cool but I don't have to I don't have to fish all this through here in order to close the loop the loop only opens right here and it stops once it gets to my berry right here so there's my loop I just shove everything through it and to close the loop I only have to have access to that right there so now I close the loop right there this one I made my my end loop here just barely big enough to get my not through it's not really a problem but I like it a little bit bigger so I made some mores played with a little bit I like this size right here better so now that's plenty big to get everything through there just like that close it down there we are okay so here's my here's my sock shackle that I used sleeping last night in here and so I'm going to pull it out of here so I can show you how we feed it through here now so this deal here so it's designed to shove through with this end right here so here's what I do you just get that started in the end of the sleeve inside the fabric of the sleeve right there and you just start shoving it through

and look you know this is an ultra-light so this this bunch is up a little easier than the others but I've done the diet the I've done the honeycomb X wide ponchos with it no problem I've done the HD poncho no real problem it just takes a little just a little more effort but anyway so all you're doing you're just feeding it through here like this and once you get to the end you just pull it out now you'll notice the and you get that knot through there you got to get the diamond knot through there so I just pull that once that comes out I open my eye here like that okay and I shove that through there get my knot up through there and now all I got to do is close the loop right there so there we are there's my soft shackle I'm ready to I'm ready to hang this thing up now probably normally still going to sell our Poncho's with parachute cord and offer and not offer the Whoopie sling soft shackle deal is absolutely just a total just a total upgrade option or whatever so you'd still get your parachute cord is what I'm thinking but it's not quite as versatile as parachute cord so I don't know at this point parachute cord is still the standard offering and we're not looking at totally substituting the Whoopie sling soft shackle option is just an option to take the place of parachute cord so anyway it'd be good at both honestly there it is right there just another in the series buy this right here this is going to be it right here all I'm going to do is just tweak on my end just kind of how the finished product comes out but other than that that's going to be a doable deal and we're going to have it on the website under cordage so don't look for it under shelter or Poncho's we may have a link to another thing I should show you this ultralight material is not I'm not pushing the ultralight oh I like I like it I like the ex white a lot though because especially last night it was really windy up here and the X wide would have been nice to have a little more wind protection all right so now in the heavier materials you've got to keep you've got to keep this in from pulling through while you're trying to get the other shove the other end all the way through so I found an easy way to deal with that is just open up your just open up your loop here then take your tab that's on the end like this is the new the older style tabs came out from the side them it'll work the same either way so I could do is just pull your loop through there and then close it now now it's caught around here you're not going to pull your you're not going to pull your cord you know yeah I got to pull your cord through while you're pushing this through here so there we are I'm halfway through now there we are I'm all the way through there's my knot now I just come over here to this side and I just loosen that just slightly pull that back out of there

I'm probably going to make this probably going to make this eye a little bit bigger in our production models I'll probably make that eye just a little larger than that so we you know just for I mean that's good enough but I think I just like a little larger bleed but anyway get a lot it'll almost it'll pretty much close itself just by pulling on it but anyway so so there we go right there I'm good I'm ready to hang right there just like that you see that wasn't hard to do at all see how loose the fabric it doesn't it's not all gobbed up really tight I could just leave that like that and stuff it a lot of times I don't fold my ponchos up except for HD ones you might have to but most of the other ones I normally just stuff them in a bag but anyway so there you go