Building a Boat Dock with Pontoons
Have you ever considered building your own personal boat dock or fishing pier? In a chance encounter I ran into just too good a buy and opportunity to purchase a couple of pontoons on which to construct a dock for our boat. When I happened upon the pontoons the reality of it was I was actually looking for barrels for the actual construction. But the problem was I was actually having a hard time locating enough suitable barrels within a decent driving range of my home that they weren’t attempting to get an arm and a leg out of to boot. Now if you have had any real experience with boat docks you’re aware that though barrels will and do make a decent enough boat dock they do have their shortcomings. One being is they can be difficult to strap or fasten to the bottom of the dock securely where they’ll stay. Another being unless you’re real careful about dock construction and design they do have a tendency to pop up the deck boards on top of the dock above the barrels. And third at least up here in the north due to snow and ice boat docks need to be removed on a seasonal basis and it’s not uncommon to observe a barrel escaping downriver when the docks are pulled. By utilizing pontoons for our dock at least I’ve eliminated a few sources of reoccurring problems of being a dock owner and now have a good serviceable dock that should last many years without any real issues or repairs to deal with.
The pontoons as purchased had been prior my acquisition been utilized on a homemade pontoon houseboat. As such the factory cross members had been long lost when some previous owner built their boat. You can see some of remaining two by fours left from the previous structure still fastened to the pontoons. Since such a key element of building another boat or even a boat dock was missing, I used in my favor to substantially lower the purchase price he was asking for them. These pontoons are a bit unusual at twenty eight feet in length, most if not all the used and available pontoons you may be able to find will usually be somewhat shorter in length.
I’ve worked construction and sort of got lucky in a demolition job I was assigned to a while back. The 2X6's used in the construction were essentially “free” to me. They came off a fire destroyed home the company I worked for was demoing, so I agreed to remove them on “my time” if they agreed to let me have the salvaged materials.
I made every attempt to keep the all the costs minimized for this project by utilizing left over materials I still had laying around from my pontoon houseboat rebuild. The hardware utilized to fasten the 2X6 cross members to the pontoons was cut from some of the left over railing and rub rails again using basically free materials. The only real downside of me or anyone for that matter being so frugal and green is that it did increase the total amount of time incurred for completion of the project, but since my time is considered far less valuable than my dollar (just ask anyone you’ve worked for) so I figure it was a fair trade-off in value.
I decided to personalize our dock by routering our boat name into the wood on both sides before fastening the boards to the deck. Though I was apprehensive about freehand lettering utilizing a router because I’ve never attempted it before, it actually was in reality easy should you care to attempt it on yours. The inside and outside corners were fashioned out of some app. 3/16th aluminum scrap that I also had laying around. After cutting it to the correct width of 5 and ½ inches and bent 90 deg. They were all trial fitted to their particular corner and drilled for their fasteners. Being that each corner was then in essence unique to their placement each was then marked and identified so they could or would be put back into their perspective place. The outside corners were then removed and a triangle file was utilized to make the round holes square to properly receive the 3/8in. hot dipped galvanized carriage bolts utilized to bolt everything together. If this sounds or seems it may be to much trouble you can your purchase dock corners here if you’d like for your dock.
As you can see in this photo the actual dock is near completion and all that is really left is adding some personal touches and details we desired for “our personalized boat dock”.
In my opinion a boat dock is not or ever complete without the installation of cleats in which to make the boat secured to it. Though I fail to have photos of it, each of the cleats are bolted not only to the top deck boards but also to the parameter rub boards by heavy aluminum angle. We boat in a river and I’ve witnessed docks missing the deck board(s) cleats, boats and all ripped loose by debris flowing downriver when the water rises. And I personally don’t care to be chasing down my boat, dock or anything else for that matter downriver during such a high water event. So I consider a little effort to have soundly secured cleats and good mooring lines essential to ensure everything stays in place until the water recedes worthwhile.
Whenever building a project such as this at least in my opinion it’s important to use best quality preferably stainless steel nuts, bolts, screws and fasteners available. Though I did use some hot dipped galvanized carriage bolts, they still are superior to zinc plated el cheapies most commonly available at least around here. I would have purchased stainless steel ones if I could have got my hands on some short of mail ordering them. With quality work and just some preventive care a person can expect years of use out of a well built dock, why have premature failure due to the use of cheap fasteners.
If you'd like you can view a few more photo's here of our building a pontoon boat dock. I'd planned to link them all here, but the powers to be that control this site made sure that it wasn't possible for me to do so. And I'd like to thank you for visiting us here at PontoonHouseboatOdyssey .
The pontoons as purchased had been prior my acquisition been utilized on a homemade pontoon houseboat. As such the factory cross members had been long lost when some previous owner built their boat. You can see some of remaining two by fours left from the previous structure still fastened to the pontoons. Since such a key element of building another boat or even a boat dock was missing, I used in my favor to substantially lower the purchase price he was asking for them. These pontoons are a bit unusual at twenty eight feet in length, most if not all the used and available pontoons you may be able to find will usually be somewhat shorter in length.
I’ve worked construction and sort of got lucky in a demolition job I was assigned to a while back. The 2X6's used in the construction were essentially “free” to me. They came off a fire destroyed home the company I worked for was demoing, so I agreed to remove them on “my time” if they agreed to let me have the salvaged materials.
I made every attempt to keep the all the costs minimized for this project by utilizing left over materials I still had laying around from my pontoon houseboat rebuild. The hardware utilized to fasten the 2X6 cross members to the pontoons was cut from some of the left over railing and rub rails again using basically free materials. The only real downside of me or anyone for that matter being so frugal and green is that it did increase the total amount of time incurred for completion of the project, but since my time is considered far less valuable than my dollar (just ask anyone you’ve worked for) so I figure it was a fair trade-off in value.
I decided to personalize our dock by routering our boat name into the wood on both sides before fastening the boards to the deck. Though I was apprehensive about freehand lettering utilizing a router because I’ve never attempted it before, it actually was in reality easy should you care to attempt it on yours. The inside and outside corners were fashioned out of some app. 3/16th aluminum scrap that I also had laying around. After cutting it to the correct width of 5 and ½ inches and bent 90 deg. They were all trial fitted to their particular corner and drilled for their fasteners. Being that each corner was then in essence unique to their placement each was then marked and identified so they could or would be put back into their perspective place. The outside corners were then removed and a triangle file was utilized to make the round holes square to properly receive the 3/8in. hot dipped galvanized carriage bolts utilized to bolt everything together. If this sounds or seems it may be to much trouble you can your purchase dock corners here if you’d like for your dock.
As you can see in this photo the actual dock is near completion and all that is really left is adding some personal touches and details we desired for “our personalized boat dock”.
In my opinion a boat dock is not or ever complete without the installation of cleats in which to make the boat secured to it. Though I fail to have photos of it, each of the cleats are bolted not only to the top deck boards but also to the parameter rub boards by heavy aluminum angle. We boat in a river and I’ve witnessed docks missing the deck board(s) cleats, boats and all ripped loose by debris flowing downriver when the water rises. And I personally don’t care to be chasing down my boat, dock or anything else for that matter downriver during such a high water event. So I consider a little effort to have soundly secured cleats and good mooring lines essential to ensure everything stays in place until the water recedes worthwhile.
Whenever building a project such as this at least in my opinion it’s important to use best quality preferably stainless steel nuts, bolts, screws and fasteners available. Though I did use some hot dipped galvanized carriage bolts, they still are superior to zinc plated el cheapies most commonly available at least around here. I would have purchased stainless steel ones if I could have got my hands on some short of mail ordering them. With quality work and just some preventive care a person can expect years of use out of a well built dock, why have premature failure due to the use of cheap fasteners.
If you'd like you can view a few more photo's here of our building a pontoon boat dock. I'd planned to link them all here, but the powers to be that control this site made sure that it wasn't possible for me to do so. And I'd like to thank you for visiting us here at PontoonHouseboatOdyssey .
Posted by blog.houseboatodyssey1.com at 11/25/2010 4:23 PM 
Categories: Marinas, Boating, Maintenance, Building Materials, Supplies, Pontoon, Various 101's:Various 101’s:101, Docking, Accessories, Article, boating accessories, Pontoon Boating Accessories
Tags: building custom boat dock pontoon hardware
Categories: Marinas, Boating, Maintenance, Building Materials, Supplies, Pontoon, Various 101's:Various 101’s:101, Docking, Accessories, Article, boating accessories, Pontoon Boating Accessories
Tags: building custom boat dock pontoon hardware
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