Building a small work barge with plywood

Drafting board and paper is the way to go. I have spent all this time getting software to work only to realize I should have just drew the grid out on a wall and started building something, honestly.

Looking at the first photo mock-up, you are right concerning it needing more aft support. Needs to extend back one more notch like this..



This type of proportional spacing is much stronger and can be built lighter than by evenly spacing cross members on even patterns. It' just plain old math/physics. No magic. No more magic than gravity.

 

I would hope that we wouldn't have any problems like hogging with a craft this small and with the amount of internal framework we have designed. I did find a scanner to copy the drawings so maybe tomorrow i might have something to post..

 

here are some prints but they are pretty light and hard to see.

 

One drawing is the side view, another is the top view showing the frame layout, another is how the bulkheads will be cut

 

click on the thumbnail for a bigger view

 

Hey man you know what you are doing with a drafting pen. Excellent drawing skills (not that I would actually know,ha,ha).

What type of hauling will you be using this barge for? Long distance or short trips close to home? Lake Champaign is a big lake right (Chicago?)? Windy and lots of wave action over there?

 

Local work, not too heavy, #4000 max, and you were close, lake champlain is between nY and VT. 130 miles long and about 11 miles at the widest which is just about where we are. Right across from burlington vt. It does get pretty wild at times. Thats why were building a new barge, bad storm. And its not me with the drafting pencil, my mechanic Chick. I wish i could draw and envision things like he does. We just bounce ideas off each other and fine tune it as we go along.

 

You mentioned a crane earlier. Do you have one that you want to install or did you plan on building it too?

 

I thought i had one on ebay but got nailed right at the last minute. It was a non opertional unit but thats ok. We can make it work. Were planning on a 3 or 4000# truck crane like an ideal or similar. Not a real long boom, maybe 3 section, 15 foot. I have a national crane, #15000 mounted on an old school bus chasis but that will be much too large. I like the 360 degree boom rotation asset over a fixed A frame or jib crane. THen we can set 3 or 4 anchors on deck and save trips back to shore. We have to re set all of our anchors for the docks this spring. Probably 30 to 35 plus our customers mooring work that i couldnt get to this summer. Need to clone myself.

 

Is this what you have in mind?

http://bargecranes.net/image/Barge Pics 046.jpg

 

That's a darn nice rig. What did it cost?

 

much smaller although we could probably force ourselves to work with that.

Like this

 

oops hold on

 

I found this from a google search [barge crane].
I can guarantee they dropped more than 1k on it, materials wise for sure.

How goes it Hoytdow?