Dutchwaregear Chameleon Hammock and Xeon Tarp

Description

http://www.selfrelianceoutfitters.com

The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

morning folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters and the Pathfinder school what I'd like to do this morning is just kind of walk you through a hammock setup that I've got from Dutch where gear calm and if you're not familiar with Dutch where gear he started out as they kind of do it yourself for making hammocks and tarps and things like that and he's invented a lot of products and has patents on lots of different locking mechanisms and adjustment mechanisms for hammocks and he has his own company called Dutch wear gear comm and he's kind of considered the Guru of hammock camping in that niche of the community so what I wanted to do today was I wanted to walk you through a setup that I've been using for a little while now that Dutch sent me and show you some of the little intricacies of Dutch is set up and why I think it's so innovative and so good now bear in mind Dutch is an ultra light Appalachian Trail hiker so everything that he makes is based on that ultralight mentality and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that you sacrifice a little bit of durability to go ultralight but at the same time Dutch is very good at finding fabrics that are not only light but they're also very durable and the material that he uses often has a rip stop type X pattern in it that's embedded into the product to make it stronger as well as being lightweight so anyway let me cut the bull and just kind of get this stuff out of my backpack and set up this tarp and chameleon style hammock that he makes for you and kind of show you some of the different buckles and cinch straps and things that he uses on his systems that I think are really cool I don't sell his equipment on my website but you can get a Dutch wear gear comm and find all of this stuff stay with me guys so I figured what we're going through this I kind of show you how I set this up in my practice and this is my faul Raven Laplander 45 pack and it's got a lid that's got a pocket for easy access stuff on it and it's got a lid pocket on the inside and that's where I keep two carabiners my suspension straps and my stakes for my system that's just something that's really easy for me to get to so I'm gonna drop the stakes back in there for now we're gonna use these two straps real quick to set up where we're gonna hang our hammock on the tree the cool thing about these the way Dutch has got these made is they've got what's called Dutch clips on these straps so that when you hook these straps on to a tree they have these patented clips on them that allow you to just wrap it around the tree and drop it in place just like this and you have that's about an 1800 pound test strap right here it has a really quick connecting disconnect on it so that you can wrap around any sized tree that you need and you can use that either upside down or right side up as far as this Dutch clip goes you can put it right side up like this and put it on the tree or you could go the other direction with it and put it upside down it does have a keeper in it there that will hold it in place so it's not going to come off the tree so we'll get these set up first and then we'll get our hammock system set up on them what I'm going to do with this I'm going to use that same methodology that I used before with my system of using a marlinespike hitch and these ultralight carabiners work really good for that you could use a stick as well or we're just going to climb the rope and I've done this on video before for you guys and showed you how to use these marlinespike hitches and this will be our hook for a Whoopie sling on our hammock when we get set up okay in the top of my pack generally what I keep in here at the very top or things I need to get to very quickly on the fly so I've generally got my extra outerwear of some kind in there for wet weather and then my bush pot and below that is my shelter system and I've got a hammock in a tarp side-by-side in here the total weight of this hammock and tarp is I'm sure it's well under 2 pounds to be honest with you is probably under that even this tarp actually weighs almost nothing and the hammocks just a little bit heavier because it incorporates a bug net as well so let's take this hammock over and get set up on our suspension system okay the way he's got this set up is it's got two ends that will open so that you can pull your strapping out from both ends and what that will tell you is the way they've got this color-coded is they generally put the colored bead of their Whoopie sling in this case it's an orange bead on the head side so if you plan on laying your head up to this end that would be where you'd hook your Whoopie sling for the head side then you can just walk this straight down I've got mine from the last time I had it set up I've got my string coiled up on here my excess will just unravel that and then really all we need to do is open this up on this side and walk this thing down to the other end very simple so now we're just going to walk this out to the other end and we're gonna leave this back on here swing up to the other end then we can start to draw things up where we want to be nasty advantage to this whoopee swing system as you can draw it up as tight as you want it very very quickly so if you're not familiar with these Whoopie slings they are made from a Dyneema cordage that's very strong and you basically are splicing it through the cord itself to make like a Chinese finger trap so if you're going to loosen it you push the beat against it and pull the tag end and if you're going to tighten it you just pull the tag in through the finger trap or through the splice until you get it as tight as it needs to be and the way this hammocks setup it has a static Ridge line on it so you can only get it so tight and you know exactly you've got that right hang angle once you get it that tight once you sit in it stretch it out a little bit you may want to come back here and retighten there's a couple things I want to show you on this hammock I don't know if you can see this fabric very well on the camera but it has cross hashing in it because it is cross hatching in it because it is a ripstop type material it's very strong and durable obviously it's not going to withstand sparks from a fire that's the sacrifice you make with the ultralight but it is a very durable and strong fabric with lots of tie out points like I said so that you have adjustable shock cord on here that you can lash out to your stakes from your tarp or whatever since you get a good a sim lay in this hammock this hammock also has besides the bug net it has a top shelf here and I can turn this camera just a little bit it has a top shelf here that's adjustable on the static ridgeline so that you can't put things up in that shelf if you need to with plenty of adjustment points and not to make it Tiger and it slides along a ridge line to get it completely out of your way if you need to it also has a ridgeline organizer that slides up and down here that's built into the hammock and then I've just taken a night eyes moon light and attached it through there so that I've got a light inside my hammock to read or whatever I'm doing without having to hang a head light up there because it doesn't add much weight to the hammock and I can just leave it attached to that static Ridgeline you can buy these things at Lowe's at Home Depot places like that or you can order them online

as well so I'm really fond of this hammock system and again with this integrated bug net that can be taken off or put on you know if I'm not in a season where I've got to worry about bugs I can reduce a little bit of the weight by taking that bug net off but I found them in an area like Florida where a lot of bugs are down south or I'm in the right time of the year in Ohio where it gets buggy that bug net makes a big difference so I'm really really fond of the way this hammock sets up once we get our tarp set up over the top of it we will pull these shock cords out for that a symbol a we're talking about and I'll show you what that looks like as well okay so let's talk about this tarp system for a minute because I'm really fond of this as well this is an ultralight tar pool but it is huge it's like almost I think this is an 11 foot or 12 foot hammock I think it's an 11 foot hammock and this tarp is plenty long enough to cover this hammock and it is a hex tarp now you've got suspension lines on this tarp and you've got tie out lines and tie out lines that he put on here forming our called Dutch wire and they're very similar they're Dyneema but they're really really thin they don't weigh a lot but they have a lot of strength to them and then he's got a Dyneema cord that's a little bit thinner for the tarp Pyatt itself and connected to this is where I have the Stinger clip so we're going to talk about these Stinger clips that are made out of titanium here in just a minute because these are a very interesting system that he uses for his tarps ok so what we're going to do is we're just going to take our tarp line which is connected to the tie out point or the grommet point our tarp and it's connected to that stinger and we're just going to run down around the tree whatever Heights we want really quick like here pull it about even with our hammock

and we're just going to temporarily tie this thing off and I'm adjusting this camera as I go guys kind of bear with me here

so what you're supposed to do with this is gain mechanical advantage here in this front stinger and once you do that once you've gained that mechanical advantage you can then wrap this thing around the antenna and lock it in place so I'm just going to do that loosely at about enough length to overlap my hammock here until I go to tie out the other end and I'm going to tie out of it out exactly the same way okay so now that I've tied the other end of that off I can come back to this first one pull it out of that eye or out of that intent excuse me and I'm just going to pull it all the way out of here so you can see what we're doing and I've got this line pulled through the Stinger portion here that gives me that mechanical advantage to pull it taut and once I do that I can just come up and wrap it around the antenna two times and it's secure I didn't have to tie any knots or anything it's very easy to get that undone when the time comes and now I have my tarp setup right above my hammock I wanted to try to give you kind of a close-up of this stinger titanium sensing device that Dutch house developed here you've got a stinger here on the bottom and you've got two antennae all of this clips if you know anything about Dutch all of this stuff is named after insects so it's got a carabiner type swing gate clip on it here in the main body two antennae and the stinger and the stinger is used again to get that two to one leverage on your line by hooking it into that slot and pulling it to get that to one leverage and once you've got that then you just come around and wrap twice around the antenna just like that and it locks into place so that you have a taut line very easy to get undone no muss no fuss with that and again being titanium tape don't

way anything and they're only about 2 inches long at the most if they're that big so that's a great little system that he's developed there and I want to show you that up close now the other thing duck uses is this Dutch wire because a Dutch wire on his tarps and this stuff is again Dyneema that's ultra strong but ultra lightweight and you can just stick your marlinespike hitch and out around your stake you ain't that dude out and I mean there is plenty of strength here I've tripped over this line I've snagged this line on sticks and yanked it off and I have yet to break it so it's good strong line but again it's almost like there's nothing there and so it doesn't weigh anything you combine that with a titanium stake and you really got something you know one of the things I like about Dutch is everything he does he does it to last you know you got a lot of reinforcement on this tarp itself which is made out of a what he calls an X Eon fabric which is basically a SIL nylon but it's got a square mesh in it so it's a rip stop and the silicone is basically impregnated into the material there's no slicks I'd really like you would have with some so my LAN tarps the whole thing just feels like almost like balloon cloth you go back in history to people like nests macand Kephart they talked about balloon silk as a material for sheltering and this to me is very reminiscent of a balloon silk type material so it's not going to be durable around flame but I doubt balloon silk was either to be honest with you so as long as you take care not to get it around flame I would say that the fabric itself is very wear resistant very durable so I wanted to show you this stuff today from Dutch we're not so much as an educational type video but more as just a video of here's some gear that's out there if you like hammocking here's something out there if you're looking for something a little more ultralight that's not too god-awful expensive and usually that's the problem when you start getting a lighter you start getting a lot more expensive when you start talking about kuben fiber and things like that you're talking a lot of money

this kind of stuff is not so expensive this chameleon hammock system in this XE on tarp are really not that expensive compared to some of the other stuff that's on the market today but it's very lightweight and very durable and that's what I like about it so I thought I would show you guys that today and I also wanted to show you a couple little things like these Dutch clips that are holding this hammock up and you know these stingers that I'm using for adjustments because I think all of these things that Dutch has come up with as far as innovations for hammocking are very important for us to look at and understand and see how usable they are for our personal setups and our personal use and I really am fond to these so far and I've only used them a couple of times but I really really like this system in general and the weight of it as well