Building a boat for small ships out of a Ford Bed!

[TRanger03]

Every year Quaker Steak and Lube in Hermitage, PA runs a contest/festival called Small Ships. Contestents build there own little boat and sail it down the river next to the lube. The boat that makes it the farthest down the river wins! A couple of my buddies and I are planning to make our boat out of an old Ford truck bed. Right now were favoring an 8ft bed since were gonna have 4-6 guys sailing down the river. The plans pretty simple, strap some 55 gallon barrels under the bed and let it rip.

Anyone local in the Northeastern Ohio- Western PA area who has anything there willing to contribute would be appreciated. What ya guys think? Team Ford is out to win the Small Ships title!

 

[Ryannn]

Haha that sounds cool!

 

[BlueChariot]

I've wanted to do some Huck Finn games for a while with a home made watercraft.

I'm not sure if you've seen it, but Junkyard Wars had an episode where they had to build a beach landing/firefighting (at least that's what I remember) boat and one team used a truck bed as the basis for their boat, it was horrendously difficult to keep afloat and very slow and they had 3-4 guys on their I think. With 5-6 guys, you're gonna need something alot better and stable than barrels underneath lol

I suggest welding the hell out of the thing to make sure it doesnt leak, then welding two or three bars accross the bottom and use a pontoon style setup.

 

[88_Eddie]

yeah, go pontoon style with the design for sure. i bet 3 per side in a line would hold yall fine

 

[BlueChariot]

Yeah, assuming about 200 pound per guy, the heavy ass steel bed, and probably 50 pounds worth of longneck beers, 6 well sealed barrels in pontoon may do the trick.

I'd also try and find something smaller, yet bouyant to go underneath, but only something 1/3rd but no more than 1/2 the height of a barrel on it's side and possibley fill it with expandy foam so its bouyande and wont crush if you hit something. I've done the math for bouyancy for rafts made of wood, but not big steel boxes, so i'm not sure what the bare minimums are.

 

[straycat]

That bed won't float so I hope you mount it to a nice wood hull. But that would look cool. I have seen Coors Beer kegs mounted to a Chevy stepside bed and that darn thing floated really long. It was so cool...Coors Beer sponsored event of course!!!!

 

[Snoranger]

I'd also try and find something smaller, yet bouyant to go underneath, but only something 1/3rd but no more than 1/2 the height of a barrel on it's side and possibley fill it with expandy foam so its bouyande and wont crush if you hit something. I've done the math for bouyancy for rafts made of wood, but not big steel boxes, so i'm not sure what the bare minimums are.

Like an air mattress?

 

[BlueChariot]

Like an air mattress?

I would only do the air matress after filling it with the foam, then heavily spraying it down with something like that canned rubberized undercoating you can find at walmart to help prevent the matress from tearing and falling apart.

 

[Grey_04]

the plastic drums will work great for that.. 3 on each side should do it.. and maybe go for a fiberglass ranger bed I'm over in venango county PA an hour drive from you if you need help or supplies send me a pm and i'll see what i can do for ya...


here's a thought send Jim a pm and see if you can score a trs banner for a flag for on that thing and advertize our site to all ranger owners watching the event...

 

[BlueChariot]

Using a fiberglass bed take the challenge out of it

and I'd still be worried that 6 barrels would be enough to adequately float 5-6 (presumabley) grown men, an 8 foot steel bed, and (still assuming) 50 pounds of longnecks.

 

[Colin]

A 55 gallon drum will lift 450 lbs.
So six of them will support 2700 lbs.

 

[BlueChariot]

That solves that then. I've never gotten my hand on a barrel that wasnt full of holes, no most of my displacement knowledge is about dense foams and pvc pipe.

 

[basilfaulty]

go to a body shop and ask...they usually have old thinner drums they would love to get rid of.

 

[Grey_04]

i can check if you need me to there's a lawn and garden center 10 minutes from my house that usually has a bunch of plastic drums that has had juices in and they were $10.00 a piece last year..

 

[gribly]

Don't mount them under, mount them low to the sides, so they stick down below the bottom of the bed but are still not underneath it. You don't want to flip! That would spill the beers.