DIY Portaledge

Im wondering how feasible it would be to build a portaledge. It seems like it would either be a shit ton of work, or the final product would suck. I began thinking about this when a came across this blog:
treefool.com/2014/09/07/diy…
This guy is a tree portaledge enthusiast who has made a few different designs. I found two of his designs Interesting (the 15 min ledge and the ledge of love) because the first seems ultra cheep and easy, and the second seems really legit. I am wondering if it would be reasonable to attempt to bring the first up a wall, and If I would really be saving any money by attempting to make something like the second.

Looks feasible to my uneducated eye.

Main sources of difficulty (for me):
- Fabricating the joints (could outsource that to a friend I guess)
- Girlfriends sewing machine does alright on lightweight camping stuff, but to punch through the doubling/tripling of thicker materials for a portaledge would need me to get a much more beefy sewing machine

I think you'd save money overall if you didn't put a price to your time.

I think it's a great idea to give it a try! You start to look at things differently once you start trying to make your own gear. Worth it alone for the learning experience but I think with some thought and a bit of copying of existing designs it'll turn out fine.

Treefool is my best friend. I've slept on his portaledge on a few occasions and it's great. He saved a lot of money making it himself. It seemed very sturdy. We've used it on rock faces and in trees.

I have no connections to him other than being friends (not trying to make money by posting this). Also I think he just does it cuz he enjoys teaching people. I can tell him to message you and he'd probably be happy to answer questions as he is a rock climber too.

Jake wander wrote:Treefool is my best friend. I've slept on his portaledge on a few occasions and it's great. He saved a lot of money making it himself. It seemed very sturdy. We've used it on rock faces and in trees. I have no connections to him other than being friends (not trying to make money by posting this). Also I think he just does it cuz he enjoys teaching people. I can tell him to message you and he'd probably be happy to answer questions as he is a rock climber too.

Thanks Jake, that would be awesome if you told him to message me. I keep reading that I can save money, but I don't really have any Idea what that means, I would guess his double porta ledge would cost around $200-$400 in materials, but I really don't have any idea. The two main problems I see with the cot conversions is that the tacoing in the middle seems uncomfortable, and to spend the night on a wall, I would need to haul two of these. Because of this, I am really Interested in making some sort of double ledge, and adapting a tent old fly to work. I agree with what r m said about the experience being worth it, and I have a good friend who I think would be down to try with me, but he is in Asia until summer.

^I let Jake sleep on the awesome-side because he was crazy enough to test out my home made portaledge with me. Haha.

Building the double portaledge (I named it "The Portaledge of Love") was not difficult but it was indeed very time consuming. I don't have the total price in front of me but I would guess I bought all of the materials, including the silnylon for the fly, for about $350. Measuring, cutting, and sewing everything took a long time but I spent even more time planning and sourcing the materials.

If I were to calculate the price of a new portaledge and rainfly versus the amount of hours I worked on this portaledge (assuming I make roughly $20 an hour) I think it would be pretty even. HOWEVER! I would much rather spend my time relaxing in a chair listening to dubstep while sewing a portaledge than in the hospital getting shit & spit on by patients. The other major reason why I wanted to build it myself is I had specific requirements that the factory portaledges (like metolius and BD) did not meet.

I used my wife's really old sewing machine. I learned a lot from the project and I feel very confident in my ability to fix any damage that might happen in the future.

There you go. Three good reasons to build one yourself.

I have been considering getting a group-buy put together for custom portaledge corners. If we got 20 or so people to each buy 4 corners we could get the price down to about $15 for each corner. This is much cheaper than what I paid and we could machine them to whatever specification's the group votes on.

Lspade wrote: ^I let Jake sleep on the awesome-side because he was crazy enough to test out my home made portaledge with me. Haha. Building the double portaledge (I named it "The Portaledge of Love") was not difficult but it was indeed very time consuming. I don't have the total price in front of me but I would guess I bought all of the materials, including the silnylon for the fly, for about $350. Measuring, cutting, and sewing everything took a long time but I spent even more time planning and sourcing the materials. If I were to calculate the price of a new portaledge and rainfly versus the amount of hours I worked on this portaledge (assuming I make roughly $20 an hour) I think it would be pretty even. HOWEVER! I would much rather spend my time relaxing in a chair listening to dubstep while sewing a portaledge than in the hospital getting shit & spit on by patients. The other major reason why I wanted to build it myself is I had specific requirements that the factory portaledges (like metolius and BD) did not meet. I used my wife's really old sewing machine. I learned a lot from the project and I feel very confident in my ability to fix any damage that might happen in the future. There you go. Three good reasons to build one yourself. I have been considering getting a group-buy put together for custom portaledge corners. If we got 20 or so people to each buy 4 corners we could get the price down to about $15 for each corner. This is much cheaper than what I paid and we could machine them to whatever specification's the group votes on.

Thanks so much, If you get close to the 20 people needed, please let me know and I will join. This info is helpful and a bit surprising (cheaper than I thought). Sorry for asking a lot of questions, but how much do you think this would cost me with out the fly? Additionally, how do you know when webbing is sufficiently sewn? what is considered standard for strength? Finally, do you know roughly how string your top cap is? Thanks

If you didn't build a rainfly you would save a crap ton of time, but probably only like $50-$75.

Since the webbing will not be a life line I did not worry about how much weight it could hold. I used a few different stitch patterns, shock loaded the webbing, then picked the one that was easiest to sew. I couldn't break a single stitch with any of the patterns I used so I figured my mostly-static-weight divided by another five straps would be sufficient.

I did not test my top cap at a factory. I did however beat the shit out of it in my basement and after it easily passed all of my tests I tripled the layers of aluminum. Treestuff.com does failure pull tests for roughly $20. They will send you a picture of the failed item and a graph listing how much force it took to break it. Or you could go oldschool and just run a piece of webbing through a waterproof cone then seal the crap out of it with glue.

Lspade wrote:If you didn't build a rainfly you would save a crap ton of time, but probably only like $50-$75. Since the webbing will not be a life line I did not worry about how much weight it could hold. I used a few different stitch patterns, shock loaded the webbing, then picked the one that was easiest to sew. I couldn't break a single stitch with any of the patterns I used so I figured my mostly-static-weight divided by another five straps would be sufficient. I did not test my top cap at a factory. I did however beat the shit out of it in my basement and after it easily passed all of my tests I tripled the layers of aluminum. Treestuff.com does failure pull tests for roughly $20. They will send you a picture of the failed item and a graph listing how much force it took to break it. Or you could go oldschool and just run a piece of webbing through a waterproof cone then seal the crap out of it with glue.

Awesome, Thanks so much!

I built a portaledge this summer for fun. I found treefool's ledges to be very helpful and inspiring for designing and fabricating mine.

imgur.com/a/tlxzI

VincentM wrote:I built a portaledge this summer for fun. I found treefool's ledges to be very helpful and inspiring for designing and fabricating mine. imgur.com/a/tlxzI

Dang dude that looks legit!! Nice work