Duct Tape and PVC Canoe

Browsing Imgur one day I saw some guys that made a duct tape canoe, and decided to try my hand at the same. I saw a few other Instructables on this site that made kayaks or canoes, but they seemed a little smaller in scale and I wanted to build one I could use more than once and for it to be comfortable and enjoyable. Using a few ideas pulled from other DIYers, my wife and I built a canoe that we could both enjoy!

Edit: Here's the video of our launch!

*We definitely recommend life jackets, we just took a small test in relatively shallow water since its already winter and we wanted to avoid getting wet at all costs. We also learned, as you can see in the video, that kayak-style paddles was a bad idea. We're going to cut the ends off and make them typical oars.

We wanted our canoe to be about 14' long (after researching basic canoe sizes/shapes on Amazon) and just under 3' wide. Here is a basic list of things we bought/used for the canoe:

• 6 sections of 20' 3/4" pvc pipe
• 1 section of 10' 1" pvc pipe
• 6 rolls of duct tape
• lighter
• pliers
• 25'x10' painters plastic
• pvc cement
• 2 plastic school chairs from craigslist
• 2 sections of 2'x3' thin but sturdy plywood

And for the paddles:

• 2 sections 10' 1" pvc pipe
• a few 18"x6" sections of thin but sturdy wood from Home Depot's scrap lumber section (free)
• length of rope

Cut 2 sections of the 3/4" pipe into 14' lengths, and 2 more into about 13'8" lengths. I wanted the bottom of the canoe to be a little more narrow than the top, so the 14' lengths are for the top and the others for the bottom.

Wanting the canoe to be a little sturdier than just being held together by duct tape, I used an idea from this guy's pvc kayak (https://www.instructables.com/id/Duct-Tape-and-PVC-...) to make some guiding pvc pipe to help hold everything in place, sort of like open-faced pvc connectors. Using 1" pipe, I cut a few 6" sections of pipe down the middle, leaving me with two long semicircle-ish lengths of pipe. The 1" pipe cups the 3/4" pipe very snugly, so I could heat the middle of the sections (to make bending easier) and then bend it into my own open connector and apply where needed. This way I could still get the long sloping curve of a canoe (I originally planned on using normal PVC connectors, but then the canoe would be very boxy and can't curve normally).

I cut and bent two "V" shape sections of the 1" pipe (from here on known as open-faced connectors, or OFCs) to help hold the ends of the 14' pipes together, which would be placed on the inside of the ends and and 13'8" pipes together, giving me 2 large pointed ovals to use as my upper and lower frames. I cut the ends of the 14' and 13'8" pipes at a sharp angle so they could be flat when they meet at the ends as shown in picture #4. The "V" shape OFCs were applied with pvc cement and then taped on, holding my 2 upper frame lengths together and my 2 lower frame lengths together.

I made more 90 degree OFCs to hold the rest of the guiding pieces together so that it looked like Picture #5 - giving me a basic frame to work wtih.

Note: I made the middle of the canoe about 2' high and the ends about 2'6" high - more like a normal canoe shape would be.

Here I needed to add more support for the canoe so that it wasn't very flimsy and would hold up when the water pressure was applied.

As shown in the canoe diagram, the open top of the canoe typically has 2 thwarts and a yoke spanning the width, as well as a seat for each person. Those pieces were added while leaving space for my two seats (shown in the picture as a reference).

I also added 6 more pipe lengths to stabilize the bottom (3 on each front and back half), and 4 on each side of the canoe (2 towards the front and 2 towards the back), making 8 total on the sides.

Each section of pipe was added by using 2 OFCs bent in 90 degree angles to hold the new piece to both the upper and lower frame, with pvc cement and duct tape to guarantee it wouldn't move. If you look at the closest section of Picture #2 you can get an idea for how this worked.

Sorry I should have taken better pictures of this part!

I bought painters plastic to make it water proof, since I didn't trust the duct tape to do the job, especially once it got wet. The 25'x10' piece I bought made sure that I could wrap the whole canoe in one go, leaving no spaces for leaks. I laid it out on the ground, set the canoe on it, and cut/taped it to fit.

One I had the painters plastic on, I got out the duct tape and went to town. I started from the back and moved towards the front, so when using the canoe the water wouldn't be peeling away at the tape (if that makes sense). Kind of like shingles on a roof, the water runs the direction of the overlapping tape for better protection.

I bought some cheap plastic school-type chairs off Craigslist for about $10, drilled the legs off, and mounted them on some 2'x3' pieces of wood I picked up from Home Depot. I used some blocks from the scrap pile so they sat a little higher off the base wood so that we weren't sitting so low.

I made paddles using more pvc pipe and some 18"x6" sections of thin sturdy wood using a guide I found here

https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Kayak-Paddl...

We discovered that kayak-type paddles don't work very well for something so wide, so in the future we'll cut the ends off and just make them oars.

Taped it up so water wouldn't get to the wood and make it waterlogged!

Took it out to Utah Lake to test out and it worked like a dream! My wife and I were able to get in and paddle around no problem. It only sat about 6" down in the water, and since it was about 2' tall in the middle (and taller at the ends, as a normal canoe would be) we weren't in any danger of getting wet.

We didn't finish it until winter had started, so its now back in storage and waiting its shot at some sunshine!

Hope you enjoyed this and if anything was unclear let me know!