Home Depot Brand Boat Costs $29.18

hdboat

It is a common belief (or fact, depending who you talk to) that boats are money pits. Surely, it is a fun past time even for the lucky person flipping the bill, but what if you could build a boat from locally found and purchased items. [Bill] did just this and he did it for a mere $30. His creation is affectionately called Thunder Bucket.

The overall design is a pontoon-based sail boat. You’ll notice from the photo that the pontoons are made from many 5 gallon buckets attached together. The wood frame and deck come courtesy of old pallets that were taken apart. The mast is a fence post and a standard blue tarp rounds out the resourcefulness as it is used for the sail.

Admittedly, this may not be the coolest boat on the waterways but it is a boat, it’s made from non-boat-like items and it works. Believe it or not [Bill] is a professional boat builder. Sometimes ‘why not?’ is the best reason to do something.

26 thoughts on “Home Depot Brand Boat Costs $29.18

  1. I think this is somewhat misleading, it might only cost this much of you already have most of the materials. 14 x 5 gal buckets plus a tarp and fasteners would cost more when if the pallets were free.

    Notice no pics of it actually being used?

  2. We used to compete in a race called the Unboatable Floatable, and I’m pretty sure this would be disqualified for being too boat-like. Depending on who was judging, anyway…

  3. As a kid, I once build a boat completely out of free parts that my parents had lying around.

    It was made by cutting scrap wood boars into thin long strips and then connecting them into a framework for the boat hull. This framework was then covered by sheets of polyethylene construction foil by stapling them onto the wood and tightening the stapler holes with parcel tape.

    A 2 stroke lawnmower engine I had lying around was converted into an outboard engine.

  4. I tried this once as a kid except with some second hand barrels. I wish he had some more info/pics on the sail. My boat only blew sideways. without proper luff sewn into the sail they don’t generate much lift and cannot tack.

  5. “Hey look at this cool boat we just got, isn’t it *blurb* *blurb* *blurb*…..”

    This is the kind of thing I think about doing, but never actually put the time and money into.

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