Paddles are progressing...

 

Oh, yeah - and oars, too!  My two oar-makers had cut a tenon on the end of the Western Red Cedar and Spanish Cedar oar blades at our last class.  In addition, they also cut a mating dado into a piece of Walnut for the tip and bonded it on the tenon.  This week they continued to shape the tips and the looms.  They even look like oars now.

The double-bladed paddle that has progressed the furthest is nearly ready to be split to accommodate the stainless-steel ferrule that will turn this into a two-piece paddle.  When you have a paddle that is as long as a kayak paddle, it is truly handy to have a ferrule for transporting it.  The other advantage of the ferrule is that they allow for setting the paddle blades to a left- or right-handed feathering or un-feathered position.  The feathered blade position is nice for paddling into the wind.  People with wrist, elbow or shoulder problems sometimes prefer the blades to be un-feathered  to reduce the stress of twisting required when using feathered blades.

Some of the students are starting to work on fine details - like grip shaping.  The Microplane shaping tool has been a very handy item for this shaping.  It cuts the wood and leaves a very nice surface - unlike a rasp which tears the wood fibers.  It even does a great job on end-grain.

There's still some work going on that requires making lots of shavings...

Some of the more ambitious design work is continuing and should be ready soon!

Paddle Making?

Well, yes - and more.

I've really got some juggling going on in the shop.  I have 12 students in my class this session and the attendance rate is very high - I haven't had less than 10 students show up for any one class.  You will note, however, that I haven't posted about the class much until now.  Oh, yeah, I've posted about paddle making resources, some basics about picking good hand tools and lumber, but not about what's going on in the class.

The reason?

I've been too busy to pick up the camera - until I made a concerted effort today.  Consider the fact that in the class I have the following:

One student finishing his canoe (by special arrangement...)
Two students making oars
Three students building double-bladed paddles
Six students crafting single-bladed paddles

Let's just say it is a hopping place.  The oar makers seem to be having the greatest progress.  They've marked out the patterns, roughed the blades and shafts of the oars using the bandsaw, and were re-marking them with the outlines of the blades today.

My canoe-building student and I stayed late last week to fiberglass the outside of his hull, and this week he got another coat of epoxy on it.  We were hoping to get a second "hot coat" on, but the temperatures were cool and wouldn't co-operate.

Two of the three students making double-bladed paddles are making laminated blades.  They seemed to be having a fair amount of difficulty today re-sawing their thin pieces to laminate together.  I think a review of their methods may be in order for next week.  The other student is going to have sawn blades and had prepared the shaft and blade stock to glue together.

Single-bladed paddle makers are making good progress as well.  Two are making "one-board" paddles, but with some customization.  One will have a contrasting tip and grips, while the other will have contrasting tips, grips and blade edges.  The blade edge is going to be interesting because this student wants the edge to follow the contour of the blade.  To deal with this, she's cut a template from plywood so that we can use a router with a pattern bit to make smooth mating curves that we can glue together.  On top of the cosmetic appeal of these tips, they also serve a functional purpose.  The wood is hard, and the grain direction (for the tips) is perpendicular to the grain of the blades.  This helps to avoid splitting of the blade tips.

The contrasting tips are being made with a mortise and tenon arrangement for strength.  The tenon is easily made on the table saw with a dado head.  The ends of the tenon are then cut short with a hand-saw.  The mating mortise was created by drilling and chiseling out the material.  We could have done this several ways.  If we had a small enough mortising bit, we could have used that.  Alternatively, the router table could have been employed to create the mortise using an up-cut bit.  We could have also used a spline and dadoed both parts.  Many ways to approach this, really.

The other four students are working with "glued-up" paddles consisting of a center shaft with glued-on blades and grips.  In one case (at least at the moment) we also have a contrasting tip as well.   On the glued-up paddle below, you will note that there are two contrasting strips of wood on the blade - these are "skids" that are taped to the blades with carpet tape.   The surface of the strips is co-planar to the surface of the shaft and provide a stable base for machining operations on both the table saw and the band saw.

Happy Birthday L.L. Bean!

 

This year marks  L.L. Bean's 100th anniversary.  The well known outfitter has been doing business supporting the needs of outdoor people since 1912.  While I'm sure L.L. Bean himself would recognize some portions of his company, I think he would find some portions of the modern company unrecognizable.  In recognition of this anniversary, they've put the "Bootmobile" (seen above in front of their flagship store in Freeport, Maine) on the road for a tour.

In addition, they have also offered a series of special limited edition offerings for the celebration of this milestone.  Included are the following items:

 

Produced by Shaw & Tenney in Orono, Maine will be a series of paddles that are made from re-claimed "sinker" softwoods recovered from the Penobscot river.  It's entirely possible that the wood in the paddles is as old as L.L. Bean!

 

Another delight that is being produced for L.L. Bean is the limited edition Old Town 16' canoe.  I'm not sure exactly what Old Town model that it is and they're not specific.  Whisperings indicate that this canoe is produced for Old Town by Jerry Stelmok up at Island Falls Canoe company in Atkinson, Maine.  Only 10 of these beauties will be built, so if you want yours, you'd better hurry up and place your order - only $7,500.00 with a $300.00 freight charge.  Sadly, I think that these will wind up as collector's items, not canoes to be paddled and enjoyed.

Certainly this company has a well-deserved reputation for excellent product quality and customer service.  Here's looking forward to their next 100 years!

The New Challenge.

Well, I've started in on a new challenge.  I'm making a change for a semester of teaching from cedar-strip canoe building to paddle making.  I'm going to be offering a class in how to build you own single-bladed canoe paddle, double-bladed canoe or kayak paddle, Greenland style "stick" paddle or, for those adventurous sorts, oars.  I've built them all before, but haven't taught a class on the subject, so this should be an interesting challenge.

Sign-up for classes was last Saturday morning and I was amazed to not only fill the class, but wind up with two more students for a total of 12. 

I've got a bit of teaching material to put together before next weekend, but otherwise I'm prepared. 

Here's looking forward to the mayhem and posting on paddles for a bit!

Wordless Wednesday

If I'm not around...

I went to the woodworking class that I take and used the time to finish up some projects that I've had in the works for some friends and for the canoe building class that I teach.

Two very good friends of mine like to paddle kayaks, so for their birthdays I'm making them some Greenland style "stick" paddles. They're married, so I decided that I'd do something special - the paddles are made from the same piece of cedar so that they look alike.

I also needed to do some work on the forms for the class that I teach. One problem that we've routinely have is that the students don't clamp the MDF master pattern on top of their plywood when they use the router to trace the patterns. The surface of the MDF is slippery and when they slide, the patterns get messed up - badly. To prevent this from happening, I've put some drill bushings in the patterns - two in each pattern. Drill bushings are pretty expensive ($7 each!) so I was, um, frugal, and used T-Nuts ($0.58 each!) that I drilled out after they were installed so that I'll be able to put a bolt through them to keep the patterns from sliding. We'll see how it goes.

I was also surprised with the following left by one of my very generous students:


A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen. It looks like a very interesting read from what little I've had the time to skim. The cover notes that it was, "an NPR best book of the year". So, if I'm notably absent, I'm probably reading this!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday