My buddy has a bunch of spare pontoons lying around from hydro bikes and im thinkin with a bit of steel fabrication I can turn these into a serious hill country river cruiser. just wondering if anyone has built anything like this. Thinkin about basing my design off the common creek company inflatable pontoon boat.
something like this:


the pontoons are decent size and hard plastic like kayaks


just wondering if anyone has built anything like this?
tips or info greatly appreciated

You do not want to use steel. Go to Home Depo and purchase the alumi. angles that are used to hang garage doors. This material has holes on both angles for you to fasten it together at any point that is needed.

- Build your frame to hold the pontoons. using staniless steel bolts.
- Then use the materials that are composit for docks that will not rot and are 1/2 the weight.
- Make sure you build in the blocks on the front and the back for the trolling motor and a small gas poured motor. You want be sorry even if you never put a gas poured motor on it, but eventually I believe you will.
- Think big as possible for the deck; so you can stand up.
- Put one pedistal seat plate for standing. Your hook up ratio will double when standing.
- Use the drop in pre-made plastic boxes for a few compartments. They already have lids and are water tight. You want be sorry for this little extra expense either.
- Wire it for front and back lights just like a big bass boat.
- Drop in an adequate cooler for a live well with pump in and pump out with a spray bar. Homemade spray bar is good. A 8" PVC pipe with holes drilled and capped off on one end will work just fine.
- Make sure you use one board all the way around the platform for a rail. This will solve the problem of kicking things over board.

This should be a easy and great project. I would never sit with my feet in the water like the Creek C0. rig if I didn't have too. Just not enough room to carry anything. I would even put it on a small homemade trailer if need be. You have the opportunity to make it much bigger if you like. Like the comercial says "bigger is better".

This might get better response in http://www.pontoonforums.com/ . They have a forum on rebuilding pontoons, etc.

Post the pics when you are done.

thanks for the aluminum idea Donald. I guess I could tig something together. I'd like to keep my feet in the water as I really want something strictly for summer time fishing. making wading readily available is my goal and I really just want to cruise in between rapids and fish those deep holes. don't plan on going two far. just a slow float so I can fly fish/spin fish with ease.

GunnHook:
I will defiantly post pictures when im done

Couple rod holders, mount for a ff. save room and get you one of them floating red and white bobber coolers.

Hi there I'm looking into getting some kind of floating thing pulled together too, and came across this while searching through here for opinions on inflatable boats. Overall it sounds like those are not as good as canoe or a floater design like you've put in the picture up top. This is a round-about way of saying I'm also interested in some kind of creation using the pontoons - do you think your pal would be ok selling a couple to me if I can afford what they're asking? Dimensions-wise I'm not sure I have the right vehicle to shove it inside, but maybe could do a safety-first-style roof-tie-down and take back-roads / more than one trip if needed.

I'm not educated in design but have a lot of experience drawing and making several view angles for discussion purposes. If you'd like, I'd be happy to take a shot at using the dimensions to try and sketch out one or more designs that you can modify. I don't have a huge amount of free time but can probably sneak in good effort during the day between work projects. Between your preferences and trying to work out some of mine (I like the more "deck" like idea for my own use, something that'd fit on a car-towable trailer), I bet we could come up with some good options to pick and choose from - personal preferences are all good, and sketching helps clear my head and stuff. Feel free to send a PM and while I'm not able to jump in and say I can work from dawn to dusk on something like this, well, I'd like to give a try because in the long run maybe I could save a lot of money and have something worth selling too when it's all said and done. Might be a good excuse to finally get some training and equipment for welding, which I've always been interested in learning. No worries if this project is something you're just interested in for yourself, I can dig that. Best regards!

How about this? Has any progress Been made?
I've for an old pontoon frame, to which I'd like to attach HARD plastic pontoons, instead of inflatables.
The Aquabike pontoons can be bought for $200 each, which is up there in cost. There are Chinese knock offs, which have potential if you could find them.
I would really like to find some hard pontoons.... Any thoughts?