How to Make a Portable Swing

Introduction

• materials used
  • Rope: 20 meters of strong rope with a 10 mm Diameter
  • Textile: Strong textile, army stock bag could do the trick
  • Eyelets for Tarpaulins: This is for attaching the rope to the swing.
  • Wood: The rope connecting piece is made out of wood. This wood needs to be very strong as your entire weight is supported by this piece. When you swing, you increase the force on these pieces. If you have a cnc milling machine, use HPL, or High pressure Laminate.
• tools needed
  
  • Hammer
  • Scissors
  • eyelet punch tool
  • sowing maschine

What you need:

Rope: you can find this at hardware stores.

Textile: try an ary stock for this. Make sure its about 400x1000 mm for comfort

Eyelets: Hardware store

Wood: Hardware store

You will probably have to adjust the bag or textile u bought in the store.

Cut off the bottom of the bag

You will need to bend over the cut and iron it flat. do this with the bag inside out.You will have to do this twice:

• Small bend where the cut is 2 cm
• Bigger bend for strenght 5-7 cm

Sow the bent over part onto the bag again. You only need to do one round around the bag. This makes everything nice and strong

• Punch 4 holes with the Eyelet punch tool in every corner. It is best to test this first with a leftover piece of textile.
• Add the bottom part of the eyelet
• Put the top parts on top
• Hammer all 4 eyelets to make sure they are tight.

• Make 2x 600 mm cuts of the rope
• Tie a not and pull one trought the upper left eyelet.
• Do the same trough the upper right eyeley with the other piece of rope

Part for rope

• Cut the remaining rope in half.
• Attatch the strings to the leftover eyelets. (one each, simple knot to hold)

I used a cnc milling machine to make these pieces for me.

You can make these yourself without a cnc machine too!

• First make a drawing of the piece.
  • One hole with the diameter of your rope
  • One hole with the diameter + extra of a knot in that rope
  • A bit of room for the knot to slide in and lock (important!)
• Saw the rough piece out of a 15 mm wooden plate
• Cut the holes using a drill
  • cut one 10 mm hole
  • cut one 26 mm hole
  • cut another 10 mm hole above the 26 mm hole
  • connect the upper two holes by emptying out whats between them ( see drawing ) you can use a drill and a file for this.

One for each 600 mm rope

We used a forklift to test the swing.

When setting the swing up, throw the long ropes over a branch, and tie a knot at the height of the connector pieces
next, lock these knots in the pieces. The swing is now ready to use. See instruction video for more details

Nice tip for more comfort: you can make sitting more relaxing by adding a piece of wood with carboard around. The only thing you need to do is insert it in the bag from the side and you're done!