Make a Boat in Half an Hour for Around $100

This guide will show you how to make a fun little boat for roughly 100 bucks. It is very easy to assemble and disassemble because it is held together by zip ties, so you can just put cut the zip ties whenever you want to pack it up. You can bring it with you to any sort of lake even if you do not live on the water because you can just bring the parts and assemble it.

The frame of the boat will be constructed out of PVC pipe you can easily get at Home Depot. It is used to create a framework to hold the boat together while the crates provide the flotation. The flotation you get is roughly 10 pounds for every gallon or so, which roughly equates to 270 pounds of flotation per crate. I would not recommend trying to push the limit on this math because of course there is a point where enough weight will sink your boat downward an uncomfortable amount.

Supplies

All of the supplies for the boat you can get at your local Home Depot.

You will need:

• 8, 10 foot pvc pipes that are 1 1/2 inch thick
• 8 of the 27 gallon storage crates that are black and yellow
• a bag of 200 zip ties or so

Step 1: Line the Boxes Up

You want two rows of 4 boxes so you can have a rectangular frame that you will latch together with the PVC pipe. You want to separate the two rows of boxes by about 3 feet, so you have a wide enough base.

Step 2: How to Make Double Zip Ties

You loop the end of one zip tie through the opening of another zip tie to effectively make a zip tie that is twice as long.

Step 3: Tie the Boxes Together

Put a PVC pipe just under the lid on each side of your lines of boxes. You want to use 4 PVC pipes for this. However you can use less or more depending on what you want to do. You tie them to the boxes by wrapping zip ties around the pipe and looping them through the holes in the lids of the boxes. If your zip ties aren't long enough you can bind two zip ties together and do it that way. You can also tie the boxes together using zip ties if you want to make it stronger.

Step 4: Tie Your Two Lines of Boxes Together.

You can put four PVC pipes over the top and tie them to your two lines of boxes. These serve to join your boat together and create a base for your boat. You can zip tie the PVC pipes on top to the pipes latched to the boxes along with the boxes themselves.

The frame of your boat is kind of in the shape of a catamaran as you have two lines of boxes.

Step 5: Optional: Create a Base

You can find something really cheap to throw over your 4 pipes on top to create a base if you want like a piece of wood or something, but I would not recommend trying to bind it to the pipes because they will bend slightly when you carry the boat down to the water.

Step 6: That's It!

And now you have your very easily assembled boat(raft) that you can mess around with. You can make this yourself if you want for a quick and easy project and if you don't want to use it anymore you can still take it apart easily and use the crates for storage.