barrel pontoon boat

NS Gearhead · Mar 19, 2014

LOL, well this is one from the archives... before you get into it, this project was never completed. It was 95% done, packed away... we sold our house and moved into an apartment as we built our current house and had no room to store this...so it got tossed. One of my bigger regrets as far as projects go. Anyway, I thought it was still worth posting. I hope you enjoy!

I figured if water did get in... may as well leave as little room for it as possible

2x2 frame along the inside endge

Soaked overnight

The thing between the seats held a patio umbrella. LOL ...and here's the mascot... he also had a cocktail sword glued to his side later

Don't remember where I picked this up, but my stepdad looked it over... ran great!...but the lower end was seized, and couldn't get rebuild kit for it.

That's as far as I got! Just needed fiberglass on the front really... may not have floated worth a you-know-what... but it was still good for a few laughs.

One more thing (because the pic was in the same album) Here's my buddy helping me out

He was a real brute... but he had a soft side too. I had to put him down last month after he bit my daughter. That wasn't fun. We'd had him 8 years. His name was Sylvester.

mangus580 · Mar 21, 2014

I built one with a friend when I was about 12-13....

We put 3 barrels in a row for 2 pontoons. Placed 2x4's vertical on the top of the rows, on either side. Attached a couple deck boards, and end boards, then used plastic pallet banding to strap the barrels to the 2x4's. Completed decking, and voila - instant raft!

We had a piece of 3" angle iron bolted to the back of the deck that we clamped a similar engine to.

Cut the legs off of a couple 'waffle' lawn chairs (you know the ones, they are usually white, made of steel, and have like a 1" grid) to keep us low to the deck.

We used that thing all the time for several summers on the Barge Canal here in NY... it was a ton of fun. It was virtually unsinkable. We even 'ferried' a couple of extremely overweight people from one side of the marina to the other (so they didnt have to walk around). That sank the raft so far into the water, the deck was probably 2" below the water level!

Oh to be young again! LOL

Soundguy · Mar 21, 2014

neat!

jel1988 · Mar 21, 2014

Redneck engineering at it's finest!

hhsco · Mar 22, 2014

I love it. Even sinking it woulda been really really fun.

EddieWalker · Mar 22, 2014

Did it float? I would never have thought to cut the barrels in half. Did the foam do anything? Did water get into the barrels?

Eddie

IHDiesel73L · Mar 23, 2014

jel1988 said:
Redneck engineering at it's finest!

Honestly it's not a bad idea, just needs some refinement. 55 gallon poly barrels are often used for large floating platforms because they're cheap, available, and extremely durable. One 55 gallon drum will provide about 440lbs of flotation, so four cut in half would float about 880lbs, not counting the water displaced by the bows he fixed to them. I've seen actual large pontoon boats constructed from 55 gallon barrels but they're notoriously inefficient because of the flat noses-they require a ton of HP to push them through the water-the plywood bows were an excellent idea. Even better would be to put the same shape on the sterns-that would really make it glide through the water. Honestly, that 8HP probably would have been a little scary at even half throttle on such a small boat.

EddieWalker said:
Did it float? I would never have thought to cut the barrels in half. Did the foam do anything? Did water get into the barrels?

The purpose of the foam is in case water does breach the hulls. This way, even if a barrel springs a leak, the foam inside the barrel is still displacing water and it will still float. If the barrel was empty and sprung a leak, the water would displace the air, sinking the boat. Foam filled pontoons are truly unsinkable-they can still be capsized of course. This actually gives me some inspiration! As if I don't have enough projects to finish already

The thing to do would be to fix the plywood prows front and rear, fill everything with foam, and glass the entire thing-the problem is that epoxy won't stick to plastic... I may have to fool with this some

bullbreaker · Mar 23, 2014

Cool project here are some pics of cattle barge we use to put our vehicles on to make it to other side of a big lake to hunt on. We use to ask each other as we were halfway across what if barge flipped or sank, what would we tell insurance company. Looking forward to pics on water !!!!!!!!!!!!!

NS Gearhead · Mar 23, 2014

Sorry guys, like I said at the start... she never made it to the water. The project was scrapped before it was finished... but I'm glad you guys enjoyed the pics.

My plan was to lay a bead of silicone on the 2x2s before screwing the plywood down, then another bead where the barrels met the plywood. I think it would have worked... the only worry I had was stepping onto the raft on the side. If you were to put your weight on the outside half of that barrel, it may have lifted the opposite side.

It was 9' long and 4' wide.