How to Make a Cardboard Canoe for your Kids in the Pool

This instructable shows how my friend Jared, my brother, and I  built a cardboard canoe for his kids to play with in the swimming pool.


Materials Used:

-Packing Tape - 1 1/2" - (lots(3 rolls))

-Cardboard - 1 sheet - 40" x 84"

-Utility knife (to cut the patterns out of the cardboard)

-Time (about 3-4 hours start to finish) (Not including CAD/Design/Snack time)







 

Step 1: Step 1: Design the Canoe

 We've attached the canoe design so that you can print it out and scale it to however big you want the canoe to be.

We printed the shapes out on an 11"x17" paper and made a model (see pics)

The final kids' canoe shapes were printed out just shy of 8' long.





 

Comments

[olmon]

If you go to an Auto-Body shop & ask them to save some of the big boxes that fenders, hoods & other large panels come in, you could get the cardboard free & you might also get some double thickness cardboard, I have used cardboard and fiberglass to repair floorboards in cars & trucks & it lasted for years. I even repaired a rusted out spare tire well in early 70s Ford station wagon & it was good for almost 6 years & would have lasted longer but the person I sold it to had a flat & just threw the spare back in without fastening it. The repair broke out after about 6 months of the tire bouncing in there. He drove on unpaved back roads daily.
With a coat of resin & fiberglass cloth & some wood strips laminated on the edges & bottom, you would have a canoe that you could go anywhere with.

[dhanraj22]

wow amazing

[bob.the.devil]

lets say i did this but made it larger and coated it in fiberglass... would that work for a full sized human in an actual river/lake (or any "real" body of water)?

[vatosupreme]

This isn't the most stable design for full fledgged canoing. There are other patterns out there with a "flatter" bottom that you could use. However I think that the construction method should work.

[bob.the.devil]

thank you. i will try it next season. well build it over the winter, use it next season, if it works i am going to use pvc to make joints and saw it in half, so i can slide it together and duct tape it annually (for easy storage) if i do that i will deff post a ling to my work on here so you can see it :D

[thelmuth]

hello

[randometry]

I helped my daughter build a cardboard boat for a physics class project when she was in high school. The rules were - nothing was to be used except, cardboard, brown paper and elmers-type (non-waterproof) glue. Any painting on the boat had to be above the waterline and the boat had to last for 1 pass up and back in an olympic size pool.

If I were doing a project like this for a home pool, I'd use a good waterproof glue and paper mache the exterior using the same glue. Then a good coat of paint would finish off the water proofing.

If I had a pool I'd be trying different designs all the time. It was a cool project.

[jquinn4]

Wow! I'm impressed! I'll have to file this away... what a great project to do with the kids!

[ANDY!]

That looks fantastic.
Perhaps I can use the cardboard boat as a mold for fiberglass or something in the future!

[rhoula]

I was thinking about the same thing wow :)

[emocutelemon]

This is so cool! how did you get it to the perfect length? This is a perfect project for us. we have a 3 yr old lil sister and a back yard pool.

[vatosupreme]

I'm not sure what you mean by "perfect length", so hopefuly this helps. We purchased the cardboard and scaled the drawing to fit the material. the 84" length was a stocked length and it seemed pretty good so we went with it. Anyway, that is how we chose the size. We are thinking about buying some 144" coroplast and making a bigger one for an adult. ****One thing to remember, since the bottom section of the canoe is relatively small, the boat is a little tippy.... so you shouldn't leave a 3 year old unattended because it will most likely flip. ****Notice in the photo our 4 year old has some swim floats on. In a future version we will make the bottom section wider with respect to the total width of the canoe.

[claudg1950]

VatoSupreme: Great job. Congratulations.
However, you say here that the bottom section came too small, so the boat is a little tippy. Also, I find the shape of your forms not too easy to copy and follow (even using the canoe_pieces.pdf file).
Why don't you solve both problemas at once and make your life easier? Perhaps next time you might consider building something with only three pieces, such as this extremely simple design you can download here:
http://www.bateau2.com/free/cheapcanoe.htm
Drawings are excellent, so you only need to scale them down as desired.
(Since there are no many waves in a swimming pool... flat bottom shouldn't be much of a problem :D )
All the best.

[emocutelemon]

good idea and we would never leave lil kenlee alone. thnx! =P

[attackchef]

Having just built a boat for the cardboard boat races, I can say with strong conviction do not use duct/duck tape. It's not water proof, if you paint the boat it degrades the tape and shrinks, thereby creating gaps! made for a spectacular sinking though!

[Sparkyrob]

I can say with strong conviction that duct tape IS a good option - but only if you don't tape it. I have seen some really cool duct tape boats around here. they work great if you half lap each layer.

[theexpert]

he ment duck duct tape brand and i will tell you that duck duct tape brand is very bad so make sure the package dosnt have a duck on it

[lol XD]

That kid in the picture is using it as a kayak. Canoes are for kneeling and kayaks sitting. Not to be mean, just an OCD moment there :D

[willichan]

That is not correct. I have seen kayaks designed for sitting and others designed for kneeling. I have owned three different canoes, and all three had seats designed for sitting.

[lol XD]

Many canoes come with seats, it's more comfortable, and mainly used for two people. As for kayaks, they are made for sitting.

http://www.mykayakingbuddies.com/canoe-vs-kayak-what-is-the-difference-28374.html

[jongscx]

I wanna cite the internet too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayak

[garpg001]

I remember as a 12 year old seeing a cardboard kayak at my local kayak club, i think they made it to fleece yokels at our cities annual raft race, it was similar looking to an olympic 4 man kayak except had room for 5 paddlers and was about 40 feet long and only about 3 feet wide at the widest. (it seemed) I think it was joined up with strips of fibreglass and coated with resin, It seemed to last a few years so must have been well made. with a top speed of about 20 20km/h no doubt it beat every comibination of 44 gallon drums ever assembled. Perhaps it was history's fastest ever carboard canoe.

[Rikall]

For more variety in the design on the canoe you could Google plywood canoe plans and still use cardboard as the material.

[arduinoboy]

You could use a hot air gun to melt wax over it after you tape the joints.

[rrhyne56]

This is delightful! Thank you! Something that came to mind is wax covered cardboard used for boxes of meat. I suppose there are as many ways of water-proofing as the imagination can come up with.

At any rate this is the best pool toy I've seen in some while.

[andygreene]

Awesome. You could fiberglass the boat and it might last forever....

back in 8th grade art, we made cardboard and paper maché models of old civil war boats. We coated them with some kind of waterproof paint. I can't remember what it was called, but something like that might be an alternative to packing tape.

I am inspired! I will try to build one of these for my kids. now to find some big cardboard!

[nitai108]

Never heard of this before, should be a lot of fun for the kids.

[Zeelrock]

This reminds me of my boy scout camp. Every summer we had a camp tradition: the cardboard canoe race. It is so much fun riding in a boat you know will be destroyed by the water if you didnt tape it right.

[ARJOON]

will it support my 90kg

[vatosupreme]

Probably not. My friend who weighs about 90 got in the canoe and sitting still the water was within 5 cm of coming over the top.

I think you would need to scale this up by about 50% for an adult size.

[jgderuvo]

Awesome design. How long did it last in the water?

[vatosupreme]

The kids were playing in the water for about an hour. We found 1 spot where water was seeepin through the tape but it is still in good shape.

[wwlaveck]

Where did you get the large sheets of cardboards?

[vatosupreme]

We purchased them from a packaging store. But you could use a bicycle box or maybe a refridgerator box and possibly get the cardboard for free. Thanks

[javajunkie1976]

I wonder how someone could attach a sail to it? Maybe a couple of broomsticks, cord and an old sheet...

[rimar2000]

Awesome! Congratulations.

[splazem]

Cool beans!

[littleberry]

How well would duct tape work for making the cardboard water tight?

[dombeef]

It would work better than packing tape, but it will cost more.

[Weldeon]

This is really cool! I might have to make one for myself, haha.