Woven Boat From Plastic Bottles

Last summer in Greece, I was a part of a project where our aim was to produce a boat made out of plastic bottles. Sounds hard or impossible? Well, it was interesting and challenging indeed, but we've proved it was possible!

We used a shredding mechanism to turn plastic bottles into strips, about 2 metres long.

You can view the process here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkAQL_IlEJG/

We produced a simple wooden loom, where the plastic strips were connected to the strings by tying them up.

On the photos, you can see that the basis for the loom is metal, but we designed a second loom shortly after made entirely out of wood. It took about 1 hour to finish and install.

Criss-cross! We used the weaving method to produce plastic surfaces of about 30cm x 200 cm.

3 people were working on one loom at a time: 2 persons underpinning the shorter strings, and 1 person criss-crossing the weaving beam up and down. Underpinning can be done by 1 person, but we used it as an opportunity (excuse) to hang out, talk, play games, sing... :)

We shaped the plastic sheets according to a mold for an optimist boat. Then, we added an additional layer of liquid polyester.

It's a type of resin that we used to secure the plastic sheets.

The final outcome: it sails! :)

We have managed to produce a fully-functioning sailing optimist boat! You can see a video of the process here.