Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Hey all, I haven’t posted in quite a while but am finally getting back to building my boat after a couple years of shelving the project. Ready to start on the railing and am looking for ideas. Please post any pics you might have of home built railings please.
I am looking at angle iron vs square tubing but have mulled around the idea of using round piping.

Also for anyone who has experience with the older pontoons with the short railing at the front (look around 8”tall in pics) do you prefer that over the modern style of 24” tall?

If you cant bend and weld tubing, an option might be SS wire rope aka cable like they do on decks and in houses

I've been thinking of using 3" PVC tubing and golf netting instead of panels. Watched some You Tube videos about bending PVC and thought it was doable. Next winter I'll rig up some jigs to bend some pipes and see if I can come up with something better than the square shape of my aluminum railings.

Saw an article a while back about bending PVC, heat up sand in a pot and pour into the pipe, heats it up from inside and helps keep it from collapsing. Sure it is on You Tube somewhere.

I have also bent pvc pipe by filling with sand and using heat gun. You have to keep heat gun at a distance so as to heat the pvc but not burn it also keep the heat gun moving so that you keep the pvc hot over the distance of your bend

Thanks but pvc isn’t a direction I want to go. Welding isn’t a problem but bending square tubing might be.

Joseph Elliott wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 05, 2020 12:52 pm

Thanks but pvc isn’t a direction I want to go. Welding isn’t a problem but bending square tubing might be.

I dont think I would use pvc either just doesn't seem strong enough. I know that some company is making dies for the harbor freight bender for square aluminum (expensive). and there are videos on you tube on how to make your own bender. I was going to replace one of my rails but could not find a way to bend it or purchase new rail that was cost efficient.