Homemade raft boat.

[TheTexasRoadrunner]

I'm trying to find some ideas for homemade rafts. Needs to be able to hold me., Three pups , and in the future some chickens and maybe a female sheep or two. I never explored the waters before and it's the only mode of transportation I'm not extremely familiar with.

 

[Dmac]

I'd look around for an old pontoon boat, or at least for the metal pontoons, so I could build something. Those pontoons hold up well . They usually have several air chambers, so one puncture won't sink the whole pontoon. If you had access to plastic or metal 55 gallon drums, you could also build something similar. Such a raft is pretty stable and suitable for camping on. Put a screen tent on top and your relatively big free. Good luck dude.

 

[Glass Roads]

Microcosm publishing has a great book on building homemade pontoon boats. I used to have the book, and if I remember correctly I believe the idea is to just collect a bunch of plastic containers that can be sealed and net them under the platform evenly.
Here's a link to the book

https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/3679

For inspiration check out Richard Sowa's floating Island that was in the gulf of Mexico for a while. Not really sure what happened to that

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[Colinleath]

Also look up poppa neutrino maybe. I think he and his family made it across the Atlantic on a raft they built.

Poppa Neutrino - Poppa Neutrino - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppa_Neutrino

 

[texastraveler]

Pontoon boat is a cool idea, I wonder if you could find some ratty old canoes for a good price. As long as they don't leak you could probably build a platform between them. It'd be a lot more efficient than bottles tied together, and it would probably be able to support quite a bit of weight.

 

[texastraveler]

I don't know about the legality of using them, and they'd be pretty hard to source, but life rafts expire. The companies who service/sell them just throw them away, and often their employees will take one home to put in a pool or something. Steering and propulsion would be tricky but they're quite spacious, and usually come with a foot pump to keep inflated for long periods. Talk to the right people and you could probably score one for free

 

[TheTexasRoadrunner]

Hmmm I wanted to use a life raft , maybe on a river or something but they seem so expensive to get honestly.

 

[Colinleath]

Look up Ben Fogle new lives in the wild series 6 no 2 "freedom cove Canada"

About an artist couple that made a home on a raft of abandoned fish or oyster farm floats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Fogle:_New_Lives_in_the_Wild