William Osman Turns Garbage Into an RC Boat in Just 45 Minutes (Almost)

As a maker, you’ll sometimes spend months — even years — meticulously designing, fabricating, and assembling a project. You want it be perfect, all the way down to the smallest detail. A high-quality testament to your skill and perseverance. Other times, you’ll just cobble something together from the junk you have lying around. In his newest video, YouTuber William Osman takes the latter approach to build an RC boat in 45 minutes.

Okay, so it actually took significantly longer than the 45 minutes Osman had planned for. But, the RC boat was still completed in a single evening, and it even works! Osman and his associates wanted to see if they could put together a functional RC boat in a short amount of time, using just the components they had laying around — plus a healthy portion of trash. This was the result.

The hull of the boat was made from leftover styrofoam packaging, so the upcycling makes this an eco-friendly project! That provided innate buoyancy, but they still needed a way to supply propulsion. Instead of a propeller in the water, they went with a dual-rotor air boat design, which bypassed the complexity of a rudder setup. The performance isn’t exactly spectacular, and the boat has a top speed that’s only slightly higher than a drifting beach ball. But it did work, and proves you can always find a way to turn your trash into treasure.