Barge building

[Frank B]

I am a welder and pile driver by trade. I recently started buying and refurbishing barges patching sand blasting painting etc to bring them back to life then I resell them. Most of the barges are small 10-14’ wide by 30-40’ long and 3-4’ deep.

I would like to start building barges on my own from scratch. The designs are pretty simple but if I’m going to sell these I’m thinking I need to build them to match an engineered stamped drawing? Do you think I need engineering and if so who can help?

 

[TANSL]

Welcome to the forum.
Undoubtedly, you will need a certain degree of engineering: naval architecture calculations, definition of the structure and calculation of its scantlings,... In addition, some good construction drawings, defining each piece (sketch or nested for cnc cutting), each sub-assembly, the construction strategy, in short, will save you far more money in man-hours and material vaste than the cost of making those drawings.