Six Best Homemade Boat Maintenance Tools

Learn how to made Drew Frye's favorite homemade boat maintenance tools: hull scraper, short roller extension, paint mixer, through-hull wrench, core remover and metal bender.

By
Drew Frye
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Published:
2
Bottom scraper. Easy to make and so much easier to use. Used for barnacles on the bottom and taking mud off the anchor. (Photo/ Drew Frye)
Bottom scraper. Easy to make and so much easier to use. Used for barnacles on the bottom and taking mud off the anchor. (Photo/ Drew Frye)

OSHA has a thing against homemade tools. While a shortened extension on a paint roller won’t give them heartburn, modified power tools and attachments to power tools do. Ladders. Overhead lifting. And even wrenches that could fail in a painful way. If you feel the need to create something to solve a problem, make it sturdy and be certain it cannot hurt you if it fails. When in doubt, search it out and buy a commercial version; the engineering is more likely to be right.

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Drew Frye
Drew Frye, Practical Sailor’s technical editor, has used his background in chemistry and engineering to help guide Practical Sailor toward some of the most important topics covered during the past 10 years. His in-depth reporting on everything from anchors to safety tethers to fuel additives have netted multiple awards from Boating Writers International. With more than three decades of experience as a refinery engineer and a sailor, he has a knack for discovering money-saving “home-brew” products or “hacks” that make boating affordable for almost anyone. He has conducted dozens of tests for Practical Sailor and published over 200 articles on sailing equipment. His rigorous testing has prompted the improvement and introduction of several marine products that might not exist without his input. His book “Rigging Modern Anchors” has won wide praise for introducing the use of modern materials and novel techniques to solve an array of anchoring challenges. 

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2 COMMENTS

  1. In my industry we get safety alerts, and we got one of a pipeline worker who died on the job. He was using a 5″ grinder with the guard taken off. The cut-off wheel on the grinder shattered and a flying chunk hit his leg and severed his femoral artery. Grinders aren’t to be trifle with.

  2. A larger diameter aluminum tube, slots cut like your Through-hull Wrench, fits over an Airmar transducer plastic wing nut on the inside. Holes drilled through at the opposite end let you insert a screwdriver (admittedly not its proper job) for leverage.