thanks, very helpful. Now I know my project for the weekend. ;-) thanks again. cheers

I am not keen on playing with rope and I will make mine with 7 foot posts (yours looked a little low to the ground at 6 and a half feet for my hennessy hammock). Agree with your suggestion of placing a hole in the middle of the hinge and not have it offset, you can simply place an S hook in that hole and connect to an eybolt embedded in the Roofline beam. The roofline beam should not be more than 13 foot long (9 foot too short if you are using a comfortable assymetric Hennessey Hammock, depends on the length of your hammock) but it can just be a thin PVC fence pipe with 1 foot dowel fitted inside each end of the pipe, then drill a hole each end and place an eye bolt in each end and secure eyebolt using a nylex nut as once done up they will not loosen easily (suggest you use nylex bolts on everything). Then lift eyebolts onto the S Hook. As you stated the tripod bears the weight (via the S Hook connected to the eyebolt, no weight bearing ropes needed) and the roofline merely keeps the two ends apart. Important not to put any weight on the roofline at any time it can bend. The hammock can be tied around the eyebolt head and foot and you are almost done. To prevent the tripod legs from expanding too far or one or more legs slipping outwards for some reason, suggest you link each of the legs to cord to keep the legs equidistant and immobilised once you have the perfect balance worked out. Final suggestion for weather proofing paint it. A marine Stainless steel T hinge H/Duty 98mm x 197mm is useful.

What, if anything, limits the spread of the tripod legs?

Helpful video! i hope this really is easy to build because I don't have any experience but need to try making one! What knots did you say you used to tie the rope to the carabiner and the pole? I'm not familiar with knots so couldn't understand the names. Thank you!