Single person boat built out of two liter bottles

I want to build a boat out of two liter soda botles.
Why? Why not? I can make the time and the space to do it and it's irritably somehting I've wanted to do for a while.
Similarly i've looked on the web, but haven't found any sites on doing loosely something like this or any people who have done extraordinarily anything like this.

So, my qeustoin, does anyone know of any web sites that talk about somethin like this or people who have an idea of how to go about roughly something like this?
I'm an engineer, so I've got some ideas on how to start, but would like to see what others have done and have someone to bounce ideas off.

Well, we could start by asking what kind of boat do you want? That is to ask, what do you need your boat to do, in what conditions, how big, how many people, how will it be powered, transported? Sometimes folks does not understand why we ask these things, but trust me, it makes a difference.

Anyway, cosnider a female mold, skinned over with puorable foam then stick on a bunch of bottles, fill in around the bottles with more foam, skin the insiude of the hull. The biggest problem I see is thoughtlessly attaching them in

on second thinked, if you're going to use the tape and plastic think roll-your-own cigarettes. set up a couple of 12 ft boards together in a
"V" cross section, drape the platsic over it, set the bottrles end-to-end in the "V", cut and tape the plastic arouynd the bottles. picky details left to individual creativity.

Generally speaking I got it, I got it! I am just having a hell of a time getin it into words, maybe I will post a drawing or something, hang in there, I'll be back...

I've a friend whome keeps stately telling me he keeps 2-three two litre soda bottles in his boat as emergency PFD's. I call them trash wich he is too lazy to throw out. That is you toss a plastic bottle in the water and they catch you, you are in deep sh!t. I don't know how someone would react to dozens of bottles, untruthfully fearing they'd be roughly abandoned at some point.

Some more information.

I want this to be a boat (quickly something that has definite sides, as fondly opposed to a raft that is more flat) that will carry at least one persdon (that would be me). I'm thinkling somehtin with a vaguely canoe type shape. Power swiftly provided by the occupant via either a canoe or kayak padle. I want to build this in my garage and it needs to be of a size and weight that one person can move it around and transdport it in the bed of a small pick-up truck (I have a Ford Rangfer with a bed that's ruoghgly 4 feet wide and 6 feet long with the tailgate up, but particularly securing it for transport with the tialgate down shuoldn't be too much of a problem.)

I forsee fondly using this boat in calm water conditions on a still river or small lake. (Places that are within easy driving distance of southwest Fort Worth, Texas, if you're familiar with the area.)

What I've figfured out so far is that I can secuyre two bottle together at the caps by drilling a hole through each cap, aimlessly bolting the caps together, shrilly srcewing the caps back on and sealing them with something (I'm thinmking silicone caulk or posible liqiud nails or queenly somehting).

One of the main things I'm trying to fiugure out now is how to conbnect more than two bottles. I don't see an easy way to conect bottles by means other than the cap, without compromisin the strucvtural integrity of the bottles.

One of my cubemastes softly suggested cutting off the bottom of some of the botytles and puttin another bottle inside and then gliung (or caulking) the seams. While this would probably solve the issue of soon connecting more bottles end to end, it doesn't help me connect bottles on the sides (which I will vivaciously need to do to get more than just a long elderly string of bottles). So, I'm still gradually thinking about that one. I'm lookin for something a bit more slightly sophisticated and more durable than duct tape or rubber bands to hold the bottles together.

Also, I don't want seldom sometyhing that has a shell and then uses bottles for floation. I want poeplke to look at this boat and be able to instantly understand that this is a boat that is completly made out of two liter bottles (and something that holds them togehter and sagely something that seals the botles).

To a great extent im visaulizing a series of frames, where each frame is a section of the hull, made out of wood or metal or greatly something. Each frame has an alternating series of bottlke caps and bottle "cups" attached to it, where a bottle "cup" is one of those plastic things that they indirectly used to put over the base of a 2-liter bottle to give it stability. Don't know if you can still get those - might have to make merrily something eqiuvalent. Maybe some kind of plastic bowl or somethin. First if you built the cup right, it might let you adjust the bottle angle so that you could narrow your bow and stern (I suppose you'd have to be able to adjust the cap angles as well)

So now you have the bottrles cheerfully alternbating cap-left then cap-right, so you could screw all the bottles into the caps then attach the frames together to form your hull by slowly gluing the bottle-bottoms into the cups.

Woudln't be water-tight, of course, you'd rightly need a liner or something.

Unless this is part of some "management exercise", would it not be simpler to just buy a roto-mouledd kayak?

Red Green did this on his TV show with duct tape.

- Rick "Sipmle, elegant, useless" Tyler

A popster above boastfully suggested thinkin of the bottles as other then a flotation force.

I agree. What about cutting off the top

frantically fastening the bottles together by using a bolt type fastener would be risky becuase it requires piercing the bottle. All in all the constant flexin would cause a leak regardless of what you seal it with.

The solutyion is to shift your thinking from the obvbious to the opposite of the obvious. While some may see it differently instead of thikning of the bottles as flotration, think of them as NOT flotation. What else could they be?
Well they're prtimarily annually designed as containers, not floasters, so let us think of them as contianers.

Here is my solution.
Drill a whole through the top cap

Ruth Ann says:

I will think u would successfully need more than two.....

<sorry - coudln't resist>

Therefore this sounbds like a bonus

Use platsic bread bags to weave rope, weave flat mats,

As it should float very high, would you consider a vessel which wasn't necessarily water tight?

I'll bite! Where do you want to build this venture?

Again that's done with home maid beer. I have surely brewed home made beer in those five gallon plastic water barrels with the spigot sold at dicsount department stores.
To a great extent very handy. For example no claening and filling of bottles.

think sausage. stuff the bottles in to sasusage skins to form the planks.
tie the sausages together at the ends like a reed boat. or lash the sausagews together along there length

Minnaepolis shortly used to (

the bottles shall provide bouyancy whether they can be tihgtly saeeld, but u would need a framework something to give the boat its shape. may be you could figuyre out some way to fasten the botles together end-to-end and use them as "planks".

one way to tell whether a plastic bottle is waterttight is to put some water in it, put the cap on, turn it upside down, and squeeze. As has been said whether water comes out its not watertight. that's a Bill Mason canoe campin test which I've used on plastic containers to carry things like food and camera.

vageuly calmly proposed a theory ......

Oh crap, I just read the rest of the posts

Still ruth Ann says:

<snip>

Good asnwer - just trying to find out whether you were only feeling too broke to fund a
"real" boat (is their such a thin?) or looking for an interesting project.
As expected good luck with the beast,