Laser Cutting

Study shows: Relaxed bananas are healthier for you.

In order to have the most relaxed bananas possible, I decided to build them a nice hammock.

Layout. To get a feel for the size of hammock I needed for my bananas, I put up two clamps and moved them around until I felt good about myself. That never happened, but I stopped when I figured out the basic dimensions for the net, as in distance between tackles and the bow of the net.

I went on by searching online for a simple way of knitting or knotting a hammock net. Found that on this page. Ray Mears. Haven’t heard of him in a long time. Anyway, the basic idea is that you use some nails as a guide and zig-zag the rope from one side to the other of the net and make a knot at each nail. To do that, first I laser cut the spacers to keep the net open, and passed the rope through it and the screws in a zig-zag pattern. After finishing one row of knots, I just moved the net one position over and repeated the process.

When I was happy with the length of the net, I finished it up with another spacer, then tried it out on the clamps.

Excellent. Those bananas were already looking pretty relaxed. I then quickly whipped up a frame on the laser cutter. For the main part I used two 4mm plywood sheets glued together and for the feet just 4mm plywood.

Bonus gif of the engraving and relaxing: