Hammocks 101/ Hot or Not?

Right.
At the risk of sounding like I'm suffering from Peter Pan Syndrome or that I've slipped into age related dementia*, for the last week each night I've slept in the hammock I strung up in my living room.**
It has been some of the best sleep I've had in quite a while.
I only get about 5 hours sleep each night, 6 days a week, for about a decade now. One day a week I get to sleep in and get 8 hours or so. Trust me when I say I can notice a marked difference between well rested and not.

If I had to be hoofing it 8-12 hours a day for a week or two I'd be quite content with 5-6 hours in this hammock each night.


If you haven't tried a hammock, or if you did and didn't find it comfortable, try buying a taffeta tablecloth (about $30) that's at least 60 x 132 (90x156 is better) and follow any of the multitude of online guides to "whipping" the ends to turn it into a hammock, then hang it so that it sags at about a 45 degree angle***, then lay in it diagonally to the central axis. That will give you a relatively flat lay. Then try it out for a night or two.
Use this tablecloth-hammock to tinker with what you want in a hammock, and when you find what works for you you can buy something pre-made that fits the bill or make one yourself. Making a gathered end hammock is ridiculously simple, and there is no end to the number of online explanations on how to do so.

A couple of points:
Width is important. I would suggest 60 inches as the narrowest hammock for anyone even approaching 6 ft in height.
I would also suggest 11 ft in length as a bare minimum, and really think that folks should be aiming for 12-13 ft. The weight difference is negligible, but the difference in comfort factor and sleep quality is huge.





Tablecloths to use for tinkering with can be found here.

For ripstop nylon to make your own hammock, and silnylon or silpoly to make your own tarp, try Ripstop By the Roll.  You can even make your own top quilts and underquilts. 

*Mine's not age related, dammit.
**Obviously my wife isn't back yet.

***The most common angle cited online is 30 degrees, but the deeper the angle the flatter an area you will have for sleeping. 45 degrees is the angle at which those giant Mayan hammocks are hung, and those folks have been using them as their normal beds for thousands of years. So far their way seems to work better for me than the shallower angle suggested by others.

I'm starting to worry if I'll ever be able to sleep well in a bed again.
For a bit over two weeks I've been sleeping in a hammock every night, including the night I came home from having an abdominal surgery with a surgical drain still in. Slept like a baby, didn't toss and turn the way I usually do, and even with the sutures and drain there wasn't a bit of a problem. In fact I would probably have been worse off in a bed because I tend to move a lot in my sleep.

Really, really liking hammocks now that I increased the degree of sag.
Materials on order for a new way to hang an underquilt, I'll be messing about trying to come up with a better mosquito netting (noseeum, actually) sock, and if I can find ATACS FG in silnylon, a tarp.