BACKYARD BUILDS

How and Why I Built My Own Airboat

-  Joe Robiller

Notice: I, Joe Robiller, am not an expert airboat builder. I am just a retired person with a lot of life experience in building and construction. I looked for information on the Internet about building airboats and found very little. So, I decided to document my work on my build of an airboat. This is a disclaimer, so I cannot be held liable if someone follows my ideas or suggestions and they do not work out. This is just a story with pictures, ideas and expenses of my build. I had a lot of fun building it. Have fun either working on, welding on, or just dreaming about the joy of airboating.

The following build took me five months in 2013. Article and photo rights are retained by me, but I wanted to share my build story. This is part 2 of 2. Part 1 was in the Sept/Oct 2022 issue of Airboating Magazine.

Now that the hull was built, I moved on to the next steps. I installed the 32-gallon gas tank under the deck to keep all this weight as low as possible. A metal abrasive cutting blade on my skill-saw did the trick of cutting the 19-in. x 32-in. hole and the deck beams that were in the way. The opening is surrounded by a one-inch aluminum L and a cover plate that fits tightly with a rubber seal over this frame. It was easier to weld this frame on a table and weld the matching cover completely before attaching and welding it to the deck.

I had to replace the deck-beam supports to keep the deck solid. I also welded two hold-down tabs on each side of the cover so this could be bolted down. The tank is located under the forward seating area and the main control deck. I placed a sheet of 3/8-in. thick laminate flooring over the T-bars that are welded onto the bottom. This is to protect the bottom of the tank from damage during rough-ride operation or general vibrations of the hull bottom.