Howdy GS -
Been a while since I've been around the forum, but apparently life gets real busy with irish twin girls under 2. Who knew?
Anyway - a new 'opportunity' has arisen for me down at our hunting property. In the interest of not being overly verbose and telling too much of a story like I normally do; the long and short of it is that I need to build a simple floating platform to cross a canal. It's a good 60 or 70 feet (guestimate) and far too deep to wade. I'll need to float a treestand, feeder, and corn (not all at once) and myself, obviously, across in some kind of smooth/easy fashion.
Now, a kayak would do the job, as would a canoe or jon boat. But, these are things I don't want to leave at the portage site because it's semi-public. That is, folks can wander upstream and easily 'make off' with it. So, I've got a cheap idea that I'm pretty sure I ripped off from a season of Survivor. Or something.
What I want to do is use 3 or 4 plastic drums (55 gallon) and attach a simple plywood frame to them. I figure this much space and a pulley-rope to get me across will work just fine. But, I also know that 220 gallons of air is a truckload to get 'under water.' I'm thinking the way to keep this thing stable is to half-sink it, but I don't know how. Should I half-fill (or quarter fill) the drums with sand, or even water? Hopefully the visual I'm painting is making sense.
I'm thinking something like this: Floating Dock
But smaller, and I don't want it to sit so high out of the water that it's unstable. Am I worrying about nothing?
Thanks,
LaS.
Been a while since I've been around the forum, but apparently life gets real busy with irish twin girls under 2. Who knew?
Anyway - a new 'opportunity' has arisen for me down at our hunting property. In the interest of not being overly verbose and telling too much of a story like I normally do; the long and short of it is that I need to build a simple floating platform to cross a canal. It's a good 60 or 70 feet (guestimate) and far too deep to wade. I'll need to float a treestand, feeder, and corn (not all at once) and myself, obviously, across in some kind of smooth/easy fashion.
Now, a kayak would do the job, as would a canoe or jon boat. But, these are things I don't want to leave at the portage site because it's semi-public. That is, folks can wander upstream and easily 'make off' with it. So, I've got a cheap idea that I'm pretty sure I ripped off from a season of Survivor. Or something.
What I want to do is use 3 or 4 plastic drums (55 gallon) and attach a simple plywood frame to them. I figure this much space and a pulley-rope to get me across will work just fine. But, I also know that 220 gallons of air is a truckload to get 'under water.' I'm thinking the way to keep this thing stable is to half-sink it, but I don't know how. Should I half-fill (or quarter fill) the drums with sand, or even water? Hopefully the visual I'm painting is making sense.
I'm thinking something like this: Floating Dock
But smaller, and I don't want it to sit so high out of the water that it's unstable. Am I worrying about nothing?
Thanks,
LaS.
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