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Another helium stick mod.....

Erniepower

Erniepower

Well-Known Member
Vendor Rep
Joined
Oct 25, 2015
Messages
3,230
Location
Minneapolis MN
I have never liked the way my ameristep platform was really bulky and often clanged together when climbing up the tree and while putting the strap on the tree.

I have often hunted just using the top of my muddy sticks as a platform without issue. I hope to hunt without sticks next fall and got to thinking. How small can I make a climbing stick platform. Here is what I came up with. It's 6 inches tall and folds flat for packing. It attached with a whoopie sling. It could go on the tree with the step on top or bottom, but it fold up smaller on the bottom. The button is in the center so if I wanted to flip the steps over in the future I could. The thumb knobs are 1/4-20 and in order to get them to thread into the stand offs, I had to install helicoils in the standoffs.
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Have you stood on it yet? Do you think the thumb screws can handle the pressure?. Looks awesome though!
 
Not yet, I just finished tonight. They are female knobs with a threaded rod stud. I figure I can always replace the stud with a grade 8 stud in the future. Honestly, I don't think it will be an issue. I will try and stand on it tomorrow. I might make another one and then put one on each side of the tree.

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This thing is awesome. Love the use of the whoopie sling.

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Question. How does that whoopie sling work. I can't tell

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Great idea, but as noted there's a lot of force in the stand off to stick joint. I put a washer between mine to allow rotation and it became very obvious it was not safe. Since your keeping the basic joint integrity you may be fine if you can apply enough tension on the bolts assuming they don't yield.
 
Very slick. I'm assuming you would be planning to use 2 or 3 of these as your platform? Or do you just use the 1?


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Re: RE: Another helium stick mod.....

IkemanTX said:
Very slick. I'm assuming you would be planning to use 2 or 3 of these as your platform? Or do you just use the 1?


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Click to expand...
I figured I would try to get away with just one. Two at the very most. I'm going to hook one up to a tree today and bounce on it to see if I can break it.

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Eaton said:
Question. How does that whoopie sling work. I can't tell
Click to expand...

There are many videos on YouTube about making them and using them for hammock suspensions. It's a very simple and effective tool.
 
With the bottom pic how can u stand on the steps with them on the top side. They fold down right. So is there some way u will be locking them in place to keep them from folding down. Looks awesome by the way. Making me want to by a set to do this modification.

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You would have to take the bolts out and switch the steps. The picture was more of a representation. The problem with having the steps on top is, that when you fold them up, They don't fold into themselves like if they are on the bottom. Personally I will keep them on the bottom so they pack up smaller

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Re: RE: Re: Another helium stick mod.....

g2outdoors said:
Eaton said:
Question. How does that whoopie sling work. I can't tell
Click to expand...

There are many videos on YouTube about making them and using them for hammock suspensions. It's a very simple and effective tool.
Click to expand...
It's hard to get the rope very tight with a whoopie sling, but with the way these lock up as you add weight, it probably won't matter. When I try it on a tree with bark today I'll report back

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Awesome I'm sure we will find a way to make it solid.

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Well i got antsy and had to go try this out. I learned a couple things.
1. if you are patient, and milk the splice a couple times, you can get the whoopie sling tight enough to work.
*I may change this up still to make it better.
2. At 180#s, you can jump on this thing and it holds really solidly......kinda.

When I built it, I used existing holes where I could. The hole that I used for the bottom standoff and steps were original, and the factory put a chamfer on the holes for the standoff. All of the holes that I drilled, I left square at the opening.

here is a picture of the chamfer in question.


What happened was I jumped on the step, the bottom standoff loosened up. When I looked closer, the brass insert in the knob had pulled out of the knob slightly and cracked the plastic. Basically, it pulled itself into the chamfer on the stick.


The other knob that was on a square hole without a chamfer was not affected.



So.....

I have a lot of stick left to rebuild main shaft out of. I will make sure that all the holes have nice square edges to support the knob, and I will look for some different knobs and just for good measure, I will replace the studs with a grade 8 stud.

Small setbacks aside, I am really happy with the results so far
 

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Depending on how your tweaking goes, I might have to do this with the set of sticks I have. They are the same as hawks, but without the milled holes for weight reduction. If I can get the real hawk sticks, that is...


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These are the old sticks too. Field and stream sold them. I wanted them instead of the hawks so I could put holes wherever I wanted and not have to miss the portion milled out for weight.

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Is that 7/64 Amsteel?

I really like the platform, but why not just use the top two steps on your highest climbing stick? Are you looking for a little extra height? I can see using something like this if you were using SRT or spurs to climb the tree. In that scenario this little platform is pretty brilliant.
 
Correct on two accounts. 7/64, And my plan this year is to go all spurs. Now I just need to win the lottery so I can buy a set of gecko carbon spikes.

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