Beginnings

So yea, I decided to build a river raft. I was thinking how freakin awesome it would be to  have something to float down a river on, something to fish off of, something with a small shelter that a group of people could sleep in. So I hopped on Google Sketchup to put something together. At first I was just going to modify a beat-to-shit pontoon boat but then decided against it. I then thought about 55 gal steel drums and I came up with this:

 The barrels will be welded together in such a way that the top, opened end of one barrel will weld to the bottom, closed end of another. That barrel's top end will  be welded to the bottom of another and so on. Seven barrels make one 20'-0" (roughly) pontoon. Each pontoon will a 3x3 steel angle that runs the length of the pontoon and will be welded to each barrel where it's top or bottom meets another barrel. This should equally distribute the weight of the raft among the 14 barrels. The question is: How much weight will one barrel support before it is completely, or almost completely, submerged under water. Ideally, the top of the pontoons should be a little over half the barrels diameter above the water line. I have noticed that most pontoon boats sit in the water with almost 3/4 of their pontoon above water. Obviously the raft will be much heavier that any pontoon boat which are normally constructed entirely out of aluminum.

I'm excited. This is gonna be great. Hopefully I'll be motivated enough to add to this blog periodically to record progress on the build. No promises though.