Boat made of bamboo, duct tape and tarp

[kfa4303]

Bamboo is like Mother Nature's version of PVC I recently found a nice little patch that I can go get some anytime I need it for free. My 1" diameter bamboo pushpole in the pic works great so far. I don't have a stern mounted poling platform (yet), so I stand on the casting deck in the bow instead and it works very well. I can even use it in sort of a kayak paddle fashion to move myself along in shallow water. I just lashed it to the top of the rub rails using some large velcro straps I cut down to size and mounted with a single SS screw and aluminum finishing washer. I was amazed at how stable it is/was. It barley moves when I'm towing, or underway on the water. I painted both cut ends and every other section mostly just for looks, but it seems to have sealed the ends a bit and greatly slowed the drying process, which has keep that pole nice and green and pliable even after several months exposed to the elements. I'm sure you could make rod holders, cane poles and all sorts of stuff for your boat out of bamboo too. I even saw a pic of a boat with a bamboo floor in his tin boat. He just took lots of pinky sized bamboo the width of his sole and laid them side by and mounted them to a bamboo frame and voila! he had a floor. He can remove the current one to hose out the boat, etc.... after a trip and when it wears out he can just make another one. Heck, you can even eat bamboo when it's young and tender enough. Gotta love it. Now if only nature could devise duct tape that grew on trees, I'd never have to go to Lowes/HD again.

 

[catman529]

Bamboo is like Mother Nature's version of PVC I recently found a nice little patch that I can go get some anytime I need it for free. My 1" diameter bamboo pushpole in the pic works great so far. I don't have a stern mounted poling platform (yet), so I stand on the casting deck in the bow instead and it works very well. I can even use it in sort of a kayak paddle fashion to move myself along in shallow water. I just lashed it to the top of the rub rails using some large velcro straps I cut down to size and mounted with a single SS screw and aluminum finishing washer. I was amazed at how stable it is/was. It barley moves when I'm towing, or underway on the water. I painted both cut ends and every other section mostly just for looks, but it seems to have sealed the ends a bit and greatly slowed the drying process, which has keep that pole nice and green and pliable even after several months exposed to the elements. I'm sure you could make rod holders, cane poles and all sorts of stuff for your boat out of bamboo too. I even saw a pic of a boat with a bamboo floor in his tin boat. He just took lots of pinky sized bamboo the width of his sole and laid them side by and mounted them to a bamboo frame and voila! he had a floor. He can remove the current one to hose out the boat, etc.... after a trip and when it wears out he can just make another one. Heck, you can even eat bamboo when it's young and tender enough. Gotta love it. Now if only nature could devise duct tape that grew on trees, I'd never have to go to Lowes/HD again.

yup it's some good stuff, I have a cheap plastic paddle I found in the river that came into 3 parts for storage, with a 2 part aluminum handle. Well one of the parts went missing and the other was run over by the car. So I cut a piece of bamboo with the correct width and now I have a working paddle again.

 

[kfa4303]

Cool use of bamboo to save the paddle! You should post a pic. I saw a commercial the other day where they had replaced all of the tubing on a bicycle with bamboo too. It's also really crazy to see them build all of the super space age skyscrapers in Asia while still using good 'ol bamboo scaffolding. After seeing that, I'm still toying with the idea of making a poling platform out of some bamboo. It should be strong enough (famous last words), and it's very light weight, but getting all of the bits to go together properly would be tricky. It's always hard to get two round objects to join together. Ah, well the daydreaming continues.