Crafting Your Own DIY Raft

Being the simple water vessel that it is, building a raft out of equally simple materials is no complicated tasks given that one knows the precise steps of constructing one.

The raft has always been one of man's trustiest vessels in carrying him across bodies of water. Distinguished by its lack of a hull, which is something that most of other boats have, it is perhaps the most basic among all of the water vessels that man has ever made. Even though, the raft has always been one of the most used boat-type for travel over water as its simplicity makes it one of the easiest floating structure to craft since one only needs everyday materials and the essential know-how to construct the raft.

To build one's own DIY raft, one needs the following materials: a decking, some screws and bolts, a ratchet, some marine foam, some pressure treated lumber with some sawed into sizes of 2 x 10", and some paper and pencil. For the tools, one needs a circular saw (though table saw will suffice), a drill with a full bit set, a hammer, and a knife.

To start building the raft, one first needs to determine what size and weight one's raft will be. Building a heavy and large raft will be obviously more durable as far as traversing the waters is concerned but constructing a lightweight and small one will enable one to easily transport the raft from one body of water to another. It is entirely up to one's preferences as the building procedure will be the same no matter what one opts to construct.

Start the actual construction by cutting some of the 2 x 10" boards into half and then attaching them to full-length 2 x 10" boards with a blocking of 2 x 4". Screw the pieces together with marine or galvanized iron screws coupled with the use of countersinks. After this, attach the side boards to the 2 x 4" blocking at the raft's middle and the third positions. With some screws and blocking, fasten four side walls together. Locate the floor joists in the raft and cut them to 7' in length. 2 x 10" board sections are then attached from center point to center point all across the box. One can now fasten the floor joists as needed.

The marine foam now can be cut and attached to the spaces present between the joists. Apart from filling in the spaces, foams also add to the buoyancy of the raft, an aspect that is crucial in all floating devices. As with all foaming materials, a hotwire or a knife is the perfect cutting tool.

After the essential parts of the raft have been built, one can now turn to the decking. Like the weight and height of the raft, constructing the decking rests mainly upon one's preferences in the weight, durability, and practicability aspects of one's raft.

Building one's own raft is an easy project to accomplish as long as one has sufficient supply of the necessary materials and the requisite expertise for building simple structures such as the raft.