Special project
Not a narrowboat
This archive entry is clearly separated from the completed boat commissions.
Oakums build no. 33
RedBull Soap Box
A deliberately playful Oakums special project showing the same willingness to design, engineer and build beyond the conventional brief.
The visual story
Proof that serious making can still have a sense of humour.
RedBull Soap Box sits in the archive as an Oakums special build rather than a narrowboat. The original photographs follow the project from workshop construction and fabrication through paint and final assembly, preserving the informal character of the job exactly as it happened.
It is a light-hearted project, but it reveals something genuine about Oakums: an appetite for solving unusual problems, making one-off components and seeing an unconventional idea through to a finished object. The photographs are intentionally unretouched.
Design in detail
A special project, built with a very clear sense of fun.
These photographs are shown in their original, unretouched form and document the project from workshop work to the finished creation.
What the photographs reveal
Character with purpose.
A beautiful boat still needs to support cooking, relaxing, storage, movement and life on the water.
Making
Built rather than styled
Workshop images show the fabrication and problem-solving behind the finished result.
Character
Outside the conventional box
The project reflects the playful, inventive side of the Oakums workshop.
Selected photographs
A considered record of the build.
Each page uses up to ten genuinely different photographs, selected to reveal the rooms, materials and craftsmanship without repeating the same view. Only facts confirmed by Oakums are included.
A starting point for your own brief
Take the inspiration, not the template.
Every photograph can prompt a useful conversation about proportion, materials, lighting or storage. Oakums will use those preferences to create a coherent boat around your own priorities rather than reproducing somebody else's interior.
Start your Oakums
Inspired by RedBull Soap Box?
Tell Oakums which ideas caught your attention and how you would want your own boat to work differently.