Any fresh ideas for a portable fishing pontoon?

[Dryftwood]

Hey folks!

I have been bitten by the bug to build my own personal fishing pontoon to use on my local ponds and rivers (slow, small rivers). Basically I want is something like a Pelican Bass Raider, but I'd rather build something myself so I can be proud of MY boat AND my thriftyness. After many nights staying up trying to research an affordable way to do it, I have found the most useful information on this forum, but nothing on the subject lately.

What I am thinking of is a 4'W 6'L plywood deck on 2" square aluminum tube frame with removable pontoons 8' long. Propulsion will be an electric trolling motor.

The pontoons of course are the tricky part and since i am on a LOW budget I am trying to go cheap and easy but want to get it right the first time. I have a design in my head of a tapered "U" pontoon with 1/4" plywood top (with bolts sticking out to attach the deck to) with a vertical plywood support attached and running the length of the middle of the pontoon. The wood part would look like a T from the ends. Then glue foam blocks to this skeleton and shave it all down to a nice shape with a hot wire cutter. Once it's all nice, coat the whole pontoon with Rhino Liner.

My first BIG question is what kind of foam would be best for this? I have a factory nearby where i can get big blocks of styrofoam (the big crumbly stuff) but i'm not sure this will hold up to bumping into logs and such. I know SQUAT about different kinds of foam so "go slow" with me on any replies regarding foam tech Also was planning on glueing the foam with liquid nails as epoxy seems pretty expensive.

[rwatson]

If budget is the big concern, aluminium section is going to cost more than doing stuff in plywood. Lots of catmarans use plywood "girders" to hold things together.

Same goes for foam - generally a lot more expensive than other things. I have had success with nylon fabric over wooden frame, and then lay fibreglass over it for a cheap boat.

With a trolling motor, you aint going to bumping things very hard, so no need for major toughness.

[lewisboats]

http://www.jemwatercraft.com/pontoon.php

Freebie plans for a small pontoon platform boat

Steve

[rasorinc]

stryofoam never absords water and floats 55 lbs. per Cubic Foot. How about using PVC or ABS pipe? You can seal the ends and then you have your flotation there.

[lewisboats]

Originally Posted by rasorinc

stryofoam never absords water and floats 55 lbs. per Cubic Foot. How about using PVC or ABS pipe? You can seal the ends and then you have your flotation there.

Too heavy...you lose a lot of flotation with the weight.

[Lt. Holden]

Dryftwood,

What is your budget? As mentioned, aluminum isn't cheap and last time I looked neither is RhinoLiner (over $100 to do a pickup bed). I'm not sure but iI don't think you apply RhinoLiner directly to foam and the hulls wouldn't appear to be that durable even if you could.

I think the thin wall plastic pipe would work and is lightweight and you could simply glue on round end caps. For flotation how about packing peanuts in an evacuated heat-sealed garbage bag? Off the wall ideas I know but this is the sort of project that may benefit from them.

[Dryftwood]

My budget, not including motor would be maybe $200-300. The jemboat design is pretty close to what I am looking for but I'm not very good at woodworking and am afraid I'll spend more scrapping plywood than I would making it out of foam. I saw a vid on youtube of a little "toon called aquacub that used laminated foam covered in rhino-liner and it just struck me as dang nifty lookin. Budget is the most flexible thing as long as I don't spend enough to piss off the wife. If it was all budget i would do the lawn chair on 2 foam blocks but I'm not THAT rednecked.

[Dryftwood]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Foamboat-construction/

This is what I am thinking of...I have no idea how much it would cost to glass this though, is why i am thinking of rhino liner. I have never used fiberglass before, can you tell?

[rwatson]

Yes, woodworking can be a bit daunting for the non practiced, but with epoxy and fibreglass, mistakes can be rectified nearly as easily as welding steel.

You could get away with formwork grade ply (cheap), and quality house paint, so mistakes would be not too costly.

Mistakes in aluminium or foam are much more costly unless you have a Mig welder. Glueing polystrene together isnt that easy either, and not very structural.

A great investment is to get the inexpensive DVD from Sam Devlin on how to build 'stitch and glue' boats. You can order it over the internet for a few dollars. The explanation in pictures is worth a million words, and will give you a great insight into the quick and easy technique.

Be warned - afer you have seen it, you may want to build a 'proper' boat for a little bit more time and money than this hodge podge of a ponton idea.

My opinion is that a 'poor' job of a stitch and glue small boat will be about twenty times better than anything you can cobble together out of foam blocks, give you fifty time the life and 100 times the usage. and think of the feeling of accomplishment - let alone avoiding the embarrasment of lugging rhino covered foam blocks from your car to the water.

[Dryftwood]

I like to stand up and fish like on the front of my 20 foot deck boat, but i can't get that huge turd on a lot of the water around here. I want to go cheap but I also want to have something I like to take out. This type of design I think I can build and not have it look like my drunk dog made it.

Check out this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLIAUSSXioo

[rasorinc]

Another idea that may work for you. http://www.hammacher.com/publish/11098.asp

[Dryftwood]

OK that kayak is nuts, lol. Even if it didn't look so awkward, it's still eighteen hundred bucks!! ROFL

[rasorinc]

build one for yourself. be happy to give you links on plans. Wood lasts generations

[AquaCub_Designs]

Hello Dryftwood, I'm the designer and builder of the Aquacub pontoon boat you saw on YouTube. The foam I used, were the foam sheets you buy from Lowe's hardware. It's blue in color and solid, not the beady, white kind.

Also, the blue foam has a buoyancy rating of 60 lbs per square foot vs 62.4 lbs of air in an aluminum or stainless steel pontoon. (The air rating comes from the H-35 manual, from the ABYC (American Boat & Yacht Council.)

The beady white foam has more cons than pros. For example, it is more fragile, algae and other organisms can grow on it, susceptible to pre-mature breakdown, and the list goes on and on.

Buoyancy testing for the blue was done extensively and compared to manufacturer's notes and written literature.

As for the Rhino lining, whoever said it's $100 for a truck bed is deeply mistaken. An average bed that is sprayed, costs between 400 to 550 depending on the square footage they cover. Both pontoons were sprayed over for 333 dollars. Since my boat shop did not have any facilities to do it.

The foam was laminated together using epoxy resin, some used Gorilla glue, but Gorilla glue trapped moisture, and moisture does horrible things to Rhino lining as it is applied.

Rhino lining also adheres to the foam as a substrate very poorly and generally will melt the foam, leaving huge air pockets. I ended up fiberglassing the pontoons with 8.9oz glass using epoxy resin. Both pontoons used almost an entire 3 gallon kit ($180 plus shipping). The 2 inch sheets of foam were $30 each and it took 5 sheets total. The bolts were zinc coated steel (to keep from reacting with the aluminum frame). The frame that held the bolts nice and sturdy was made from 1/8th in flat steel, welded and treated for rust prevention. That was another $50 for the pair (including labor).

The aluminum frame, deck, transom (made for electric motors only), gunwales, and railing, cost me $390 for the aluminum (would have been $600 retail if I was a guy off the street), 6 hours of welding time, Over 300 rivets put on by an electric rivet gun, (those were $24 for a box of 600), and I powder coated all of the aluminum ($180), and I built a custom trailer for it as well.

Even with my discounts, and having to pay for outsourced labor, $1296 was the final bill (including a Trojan boat battery, Minn Kota Endura motor, centralized seating, cleats, anchor, and a non-skid polyurethane deck coating that allowed you to walk barefoot on deck, even in 100 deg weather.

The AquaCub capacity for an 8ft boat is 538lbs, and that's only 60% of the actual weight that will swamp the deck. MSRP for these were $3200 and I sold 3 in the month of May in 2006. I was able to build three 8ft AquaCub's a month on my own.

Unfortunately, the business died off due to a marketing error on my part and lack of business experience at the time. Had I started off with a 2 man or bigger version, I may have been still running the boat shop today.

If you want cheap and easy, use the freebee plans and make it out of wood. Or just buy an inflatable pontoon, it'd end up costing the same as a homemade boat.

Peace.

[portacruise]

Maybe something like I have along these lines would work:

http://www.thefloattubestore.com/ind...=index&cPath=4

You can get hard pontoons from hobie, but they will be heavier.

I like the inflatables myself because they are easier to store, transport and launch anywhere.

You can often get them used from Craigs or local for sale ads. Your local sports store often has them on clearance when they rotate stock. My last one was bought at Cabelas bargain cave for $150. They are much faster than Pelican bass raider type.

The guys at this site tinker and build the smaller versions:
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin...i?;category=66

Hope this helps.

Porta

Originally Posted by Dryftwood

Hey folks!

I have been bitten by the bug to build my own personal fishing pontoon to use on my local ponds and rivers (slow, small rivers). Basically I want is something like a Pelican Bass Raider, but I'd rather build something myself so I can be proud of MY boat AND my thriftyness. After many nights staying up trying to research an affordable way to do it, I have found the most useful information on this forum, but nothing on the subject lately.

What I am thinking of is a 4'W 6'L plywood deck on 2" square aluminum tube frame with removable pontoons 8' long. Propulsion will be an electric trolling motor.

The pontoons of course are the tricky part and since i am on a LOW budget I am trying to go cheap and easy but want to get it right the first time. I have a design in my head of a tapered "U" pontoon with 1/4" plywood top (with bolts sticking out to attach the deck to) with a vertical plywood support attached and running the length of the middle of the pontoon. The wood part would look like a T from the ends. Then glue foam blocks to this skeleton and shave it all down to a nice shape with a hot wire cutter. Once it's all nice, coat the whole pontoon with Rhino Liner.

My first BIG question is what kind of foam would be best for this? I have a factory nearby where i can get big blocks of styrofoam (the big crumbly stuff) but i'm not sure this will hold up to bumping into logs and such. I know SQUAT about different kinds of foam so "go slow" with me on any replies regarding foam tech Also was planning on glueing the foam with liquid nails as epoxy seems pretty expensive.