Miami Beach: Rise of the Slush Fund

Posted on by jbrown26v

The Ice Shack took on a life of it’s own thanks to one Zach Strecker. We built this ice fishing hut together over the course of about a month during January 2021.

Our goal was to create a collapsible ice shack that could fit into the bed of his 2nd gen Toyota Tacoma.

Inspiration

As with all good projects, a few Youtube build videos were the source of a lot of our ideation and inspiration.

A few of the highlights:

This is probably the closest design to our shack. It incorporated a lot of the folding, ease of set-up, durability, sleeping capacity, and material cost factors we were looking for. Maine fisheries gave these away to people in a lottery!

This ice shack bar captured the essence of what we wanted time on the lake to be like. Free from distractions, free to distract ourselves.

Design and Planning

To help with planning of supplies and construction, we built a 3D model:

Set up with the truck bed for reference
In the folded state

40 trips to Home Depot Later we were ready to build:

Build

By the time we had the bottom frame assembled, we had learned a hard truth about Home Depot wood: Expecting to be any more accurate that +-1/4in for any vertical or lateral beam edge was difficult. However, this wasn’t really a problem, as all of the wood could be bent or squared into place.
Combining Spax Torx-head screws with an impact driver made assembly so easy. The process of drilling pilot holes and accidentally stripping cross-head screws would have slowed us down so much.

If you’re curious about why the the torx-head and Robertson “square-head” screws are better for quick wood assembly

A quick structural test doubles as a way to keep the blood flowing to cold limbs
The main frame of the shack can be deadlifted by two people. My friend Joey attempts to lower this estimate here.

Zach found a monster wood stove on Craigslist. This is the point where the shack became a cabin. We had a fun time reading through the Massachusetts chimney code, trying our best to avoid torching ourselves inside of a wooden prison of our own creation. He cleaned off the rust and applied a coat of heat-resistant paint.

And the Roof…

In terms of new constructions methods and overall design, the roof was the most complex, difficult, and altogether unknown part of this project. It had to accomplish a few things:


  1. Keep the shack free from snow and rain for the whole winter
  2. Allow the stove to vent through a chimney
  3. Be removable from the rest of the frame for transport
  4. Provide insulation

To accomplish this, Zach got very familiar with sheet metal construction:

This was louder than any power tool we used

The final roof design was made of corrugated tin, had insulation paneling between the main rafters, had a sealed hole for the chimney, and screwed into the 4 walls for what we hoped would be a good shield from the elements.

Loading and Transport

Everything fit after a bit of fastening, lifting, shuffling, and ratcheting. This was a pretty sketchy load to take on the highway though. We realized, after about a mile on I-93, that we would need to take back roads, as the tin roofing flapped around a lot and threatened to peel off the main roof frame. One of the straps actually tore because the sharp roof edge cut through it! We’ll need to rethink this for next year, but it made it to the lake without anything falling off the Tacoma.

Ready for setup

With the help of the local bait shop owner, we confirmed the ice thickness and put the shack on Club Pond in New Durham, New Hampshire.

Here’s a video that my girlfriend, Julia, took of the views a the lake:

I’m not going to get into what goes down at Miami Beach, but I’ll leave a slice of the action here:

We designed this structure expecting multiple winters’ (and maybe summers’) worth of nights and memories.

Improvements aka Hindsight

The only thing I would really change about this project is the roof. For better or worse, the apex beam splintered on the way back due to the force of the winds. We now have an opportunity to rethink the structure and waterproofing. This time, we are going to focus on collapsibility, aerodynamics, and insulation. Most of our insulation had fallen the ceiling by the time the winter ended. Luckily, the wood stove was so powerful, we had to open the door to let cool air in, or risk beginning the Maillard reaction in the shack.

RIP to Anthony Bourdain, the ultimate inspiration for this project.

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