New Guadalupe River Boombox 4.0

JDW1479

As you guys know, a huge group of us always float down the Guadalupe River every year. For the past couple of years I have built different designs of boomboxes to float along side of us. Each year I try to improve the previous design.

Below are some of the previous designs and their flaws.

VERSION 1 -The first boombox was a simple plastic storage box for tools with holes cut out for speakers and the radio head unit. Simple design, it worked, but far to archaic for my liking. Sorry I have no pics of this one.

VERSION 2 - The next boombox design was a "mushroom" style design. Octagon on top, and battery low inside the middle of the tube. Worked great, but being solid wood, no wheels, it became very tough to carry. At this point, we are still using a car battery, car radio, and NO amp. This design lasted for 2 years.




VERSION 3 - Moving on, last year I decided to go a different route. I used a 30 gallon barrel in hopes of taking the boombox on a diet. It worked great but its too top heavy. At one point I had to save it from toppling over on the river by jumping out of my tube in the middle of a rapid. In this design we ditched the car radio and car battery, instead we used a marine battery, amp, and Ipod.









VERSION 4 - Now to the new design, I'm basically combining the barrel with the "mushroom". But this time, the boombox will have wheels and a pull handle. This should eliminate all the issues with carrying the boombox around. Also, I would say 70% of the boombox will be fiberglass in effortsto save weight, unlike the first "mushroom" design which was all wood. The beneifts of the "mushroom" design is that it distributes the weight on the entire tube, not just in the middle like the barrel. This should help it float more stable in the water. I used 3/4 birch plywood, waterproof super duper wood glue, and various length exterior screws. The fabric that I use to stretch across the wood framing is called ponte (pronounced pon-taaaaay). Its 100% polyester, stretches more than fleece, and it does not need as much resin to wet out like fleece does.