How to Make a Cardboard boat - That Wins!! 

I was a team Capt. in Glen Ellyn boat Regatta for five years building six boats. I love the freedom cardboard has for building and spent tones of time studying everything from viscosity of glue to boat water dynamics and history in order to gain a edge in racing. Other than that I am just a guy who likes to build stuff :-) If you ever have questions just let me know ;-)

Thanks 😊

Thanks :-)

Happy to help 😁. You can also check out my videos on water line and stability, plus I have a playlist for cardboard boats as a reference 😁. Let me know if you have any questions 🙂

Thanks 😊

The number one question I would have was do they allow you to cover the entire boat and duct tape. If so I would probably roll the cardboard.. into structural beams wrap the beams and duct tape... Then use those to form a frame... Around which I would form the boat hull using sheets of cardboard... Finally I would cover the entire outside and inside in duct tape... Basically build a frame similar to those of survival... But with rolled cardboard... By rolling the cardboard you are essentially. Layering it and making it stronger without using glue.

The cardboard regatta?

Check out my video on calculating a cardboard boats waterline :-) the size of the bottom will depend on where you want the boats water line.

I know when you enter the Glen Ellyn cardboard boat regatta they give you at least 10, 4 by 8 sheets of cardboard which is more than enough for a boat. if you are going to buy cardboard you can sometimes get it from companies that supply manufacturing items such as Uline. Also you can look at places that have lots of pallets with stacked items as they use 4 x 4 sheets of cardboard as spacers on pallets. That said buying cardboard is never cheap as the shipping cost easily almost outweighs the cost of the cardboard. I would say if your race does not supply it your best bet is to hunt around and look for large boxes and ask freinds to grab boxes.

Sears Lol

Wow, that's a pretty long course, if it's straight I would suggest something along the lines of the boats used to race in the Olympics... If the rules allow kayaks I would definitely go for a two person style kayak along the same lines ...the hardest thing I have encountered with a two person boat like a canoe is getting it to go straight...so allot is going to come down to how much practice you can get in a similar style boat.

There are a number of different factors that determine how fast the cardboard gets wet. Most of these are determined by the races rules and your quality of craftsmanship and material. For example a well-built five layer boat with layers that having no gaps and good solid watertight compartments will probably last better than a nine layer boat which has a lot of gaps in the layers and poor alignments in construction or gaps between its compartments... The next determining factor is the glue are you using school glue which is water soluble or are you using fully waterproof glue... I have seen a well-built seven-layer boat with school glue last through two and a half races before sinking but a well-built seven layer boat like my extreme cardboard boat build video will come out of three races and look like it's never been in the water... Personally I prefer more layers on the bottom and less on the sides to save weight but I'm constantly changing based on my designs how many I use on average a minimum of five though.... But in the end that's part of the challenge to figure out :-)

As an afterthought check out my playlist on how to build a cardboard boat the videos in it describe a lot of what I'm talking about...

I can give you my best guess on paint. The best way to learn about paint and adhesives is to read about them on their manufacturers site. I like Rust-Oleum premixed latex when I was Racing.

@@PatriotContraptions thank you! I found a waterproof paint at the hardware store but the base is acrylic. I didn’t know if I used a layer or 2 of that if the Latex paint would stick to it. Or would you do it the other way around? Or just use latex only?

@@haleymarierobertson9402 The secret solution is to coat boat in water proof or resistant glue then paint it with latex paint...but that's expensive and for many years we just put as many layers of paint on as we could and well we didn't sink :-) boats did tent to get soggy after a couple races though which is why strong sides and compartments are critical to hold sides of boat out.

@@PatriotContraptions ok thank you!!!