Build a Simple Boat with PVC and Plastic Buckets

So you want a handy-dandy little personal watercraft, but you don’t have the dough to buy one? Well, this may be the project for you. A YouTuber conjured up a homemade boat using PVC pipe and 5-gallon buckets, then powered it with an electric trolling motor & a pair of batteries.

The video begins with a short intro showing the boat, and then takes us to the build. He does some seemingly odd stuff, such as using screws to connect the pipes rather than gluing them together, but he later explains that he will be reusing them in future versions as he experiments his way to the ultimate homemade bucket boat.

And he uses OSB, which I refer to as mulchboard, rather than marine plywood. But hey, he’s just experimenting, not building a lifetime vessel.

His boat works well, although it rides a bit high at the stern. The weight of the batteries and a mysterious decision to make the seat sit up higher above the “pontoons” conspire to give his boat a nose-down attitude, so it doesn’t exactly scoot along the water.

Pretty cool, overall. And it’d be a nice way to get into shallow out-of-the-way places where no man has fished before!

The really sad thing is that in Florida, this boat would be 100% illegal on the water if it wasn’t titled and registered with the state, because it has a motor. Don’t ya just love taxation?

Enjoy the video.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.