INDUSTRY – Antonio DeSanctis set out to figure how to build a raft to hold him and his mother or a friend.

What floats? What doesn’t float?

DeSanctis, 13, of Industry, stood on the deck of the raft Thursday as it floated in Clearwater Pond.

It has been trial and error, he said, to make the raft work, but he had done it.

And he had some help from his friends.

DeSanctis started making the raft last year. He has modified it three times since then as he tried different materials to get the right buoyancy.

The raft doesn’t have a name yet. He’s considering Clearwater Cruiser.

The craft is made out of a wooden pallet and two plastic storage containers. The containers have black bungee cords stretched underneath them to secure them to hooks in the pallet. Around the outer edge of the raft are three foam noodles. Tan canvas is wrapped around pallet boards to keep people from sliding and getting splinters.

DeSanctis made a sail out of the canvas, too. A small piece of yellow cloth, left over from a previous effort, has a hand-drawn heart and a smiley face on it.

The heart and smiley face is the signature of his mother, Carmel DeMillo. She always writes, “Love, Mom,” when she signs her children’s letters, then adds the symbol.

Extreme kid’

He nails the mast to the raft before he takes it into the water and takes it off when it’s time to slide the raft back into the family’s sport utility vehicle.

Right now, DeSanctis said, he’s thinking about how to improve his raft, with a movable sail to always catch the best wind, and a keel.

His mother watched her son as he demonstrated how his raft worked.

She drives him and the raft to the pond regularly.

“He’s always after me, he wants a boat,” DeMillo said. “He likes power, but we’ve been limited to just this.”

DeMillo said the learning experience has been great for her son.

“He’s been using his mind,” she said. “It helps him to keep thinking. … I always think someday he’ll be an inventor. He’s my extreme kid. He’s always thinking: creative, that’s good.”

Past the buoys

DeSanctis keeps a sharp eye on the waves, the flags – to see how the wind’s blowing – and the weather before he decides how far he’s going out on the pond, he said.

He hasn’t ventured too far yet.

The one time he went out past the buoys, he ended up swimming to get the raft back in. The wind was against him, he said.

Besides figuring out what would float and what wouldn’t, DeSanctis said, he had to figure how high he would be able to sit without tipping the raft over. Not very high.

He estimates his newest design holds about 200 pounds.

The plastic tubs he has now are about 32 inches long, about 14 inches wide and a foot deep.

They seem to work.

“It just takes knowledge of what floats,” he said.