| To make the zodiac boat start with 2" PVC pipe, 1 - 90 degree fitting and 2 - 45 degree fittings. Dry fit them and mark them before you glue them together. The caps for the rear of the tubes are foam cones (you can find at a craft store). Shape them with a belt sander and glue them in with construction adhesive. Next you have to build up the pipe to the same thickness as the 3 joints. You do this with weatherstripping (I found that the foam tape you use to put a topper on a truck works great, it's wide and thick) After leveling the pipe with the fittings, wrap another layer of foam tape around everything. Now you need to wrap this whole piece with duct tape or electrical tape (2 layers worked good for me). Next is the bottom and the transom. the bottom is a snall piece of paneling cut in the shape of the boat only not as wide, so when you attach it, it doesn't stick out the sides. The transom is another small piece of wood shaped with a belt sander (it's shaped like a rectangle with 2 small half circles on each end). You want to make this piece so you have to spring the PVC structure apart so it's slide in snug. Before you slide it in, attach it to the bottom (paneling piece) with the screws and glue and slide it all in as one piece. Then I just attach the bottom to the PVC with small drywall screws then covered this in more tape. As far as the grab lines go, just screw tiny picture frame eyelets to your boat to run the lines thru. The grab lines are black round boot strings. To attach the motor, I used a Dremel tool to form a slot in the transom to slide the motor in (the motor came from a cheap little boat from Odd Lots/Big Lots). This pretty much sums up how I built the boat. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions. I hope to get some pictures of it posted on this site soon. Hope you all like it and hope you have fun building one of your own. -- Mark V. |
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