Tips Sail

From this Ebay Seller is a 58" paddle with a large narrow blade and a nubby style grip. Credit again to Luc P for sending me the link. The paddle's overall shape looks quite similar to Cree Style paddle blades posted on in the past, although to my eye, it looks as though this design would be quite blade heavy and unbalanced.




This is from the same seller that featured a huge, 96" northwoods style paddle a while back as well as the 84" Mustard Yellow painted paddle from the post on February 7th..

In order to protect the shafts of my paddles from the aluminum gunwales on my cheap canoe, I came up with a temporary solution that I decided to call a paddle sleeve (sounds more pleasant than a "shaft protector"). It's basically a piece of scrap leather that is loosely stitched with leather shoelace.

Wrapping wooden shafts with leather isn't a new idea, although I first got the idea from a product advertised on Tandy Leather's website as a Walking Stick Grip kit. The kit was simply some tooling leather with lacing to form a rough gripping area on wooden staffs. Famous Paddlemakers Shaw & Tenney use leather on their oars to protect the wood from the oar rings and another site run by Paul Gartside documents the details of how to finely stitch a leather piece onto an oar shaft as a permanent fixture.

For my purposes, I wanted a temporary solution that I could transfer relatively easily from paddle to paddle when I'm in the mood to change. Instead of the X-style cross lacing pattern commonly used on these products, I consulted Ian's Shoelace site and settled on the Double Helix method. Easy to lace and to tighten with one hand.



Scrap leather piece; Punching the lacing holes


Lacing up the paddle sleeve
I realize that many purists will say it's a sin to pry the paddle off the gunwales and shun any additions to the paddle shaft (like leather whipping etc.), but I don't understand the fuss. This temporary solution using otherwise scrap materials works for me and can be unlaced and transfered to another paddle when needed. While it may seem bulky, the leather stitching doesn't get in the way if you paddle with the seam facing towards the stern, as the leather wrap bears all the abrasion during the correction strokes.


The final product

From the 1905 online book, Problems in Woodworking, is a chapter about canoe paddles. Included is a diagram of a standard beavertail paddle with pear grip showing all the relevant specs for width, length, and thickness. Interesting to note the thinning of the circular shaft (1-1/8th inch) down to 1 inch at the throat of the blade. I generally make the shafts on my paddles 1-1/8th inch thick as well but never really thinned the throat like this plan shows. Logically I wonder if it would weaken the paddle right at this location where the large blade area of this design would presumably concentrate the most force.


Paddle Plans

Found 3 more historical paintings documenting native paddle designs. Frederick A Verner (February 26, 1836 – May 16, 1928) was a prolific painter of Canadian landscape who also portrayed some native groups in his art. All three pieces below have some sort of painted decoration, either on the tip or the recurring chevron theme seen documented in earlier posts.


Ojibway Indian Encampment
by Frederick Arthur Verner, 1873
Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ontario


Paddle closeup






Two Indians Paddling through Bullrushes(1893 )
Frederick A. Verner
watercolour over graphite on wove paper
16.7 x 13.9 cm
National Gallery of Canada (no. 16843)


Paddle Closeup





A Misty Morning (1905)
Frederick A. Verner
watercolour over graphite on wove paper
27.1 x 53.7 cm
National Gallery of Canada (no. 165)


Paddle Closeup

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Just around the corner from home, I spotted an amateur "Antiques for Sale" sign pointing to an industrial warehouse. Intrigued, I went inside and found a huge haphazard collection of stuff that had seen better days. I was on my way out when I saw the shape of a paddle behind a pile of rusty tools. It turned out to be a half-completed, 57" paddle blank made from what appears to be yellow or white birch.


The partially complete Birch blank
The wood stock seems to have been 1" thick as this is the maximum thickness of the shaft. Not ideal for a heavy use paddle, but still workable for light use. At least the grain in the shaft is well contained and runs perfectly parallel down its length so the original builder was either lucky or knew exactly what was needed for paddlemaking. The bulk of the blade had been power planed down to about 1/2" with some noticeable areas of tear out but these should be easy to clean up with some spokeshave work. A small, crudely shaped pear grip had been rasped out. Basically the hard work had been done and now only final shaping needed to be completed. In pencil along the shaft was the name "Skyler". It seems someone started this project but then abandoned it. The paddle was mine for $5 and I immediately began visualizing reworking it.


Small Pear Grip
My first observation was how huge the blade area was relative to the length and this caused the paddle to be extremely blade heavy...not ideal. The 5.5" wide blade had a beautifully rounded tip and I wanted to preserve this feature. But to make the paddle more balanced, the blade area had to be reduced. After being please with the Attikamekw design as a favoured solo blade, I wanted to try another close style to this slender shape. In particular, I've been eager to try some of the Cree Style paddles I've posted on before.


Cree Paddles - Canadian Museum of Civilization
In the end I chose the sweeping, recurved blade design of the middle paddle. After marking out some of the basic points on the blank, I used some clamps and a flexible metal ruler to draw out the curves. Here is the result...


New blade shape marked out for cutting
The Mrs. did some planting and cleaned up the balcony last weekend. I can tell she doesn't appreciate the wood dust and shavings in her flowerpots, so in order to minimize any domestic disturbance, I headed to the nearby park with the paddle, a saw, and my two crooked knives. Rather than saw out the entire paddle shape, I thought I take a shortcut and make some perpendicular cuts, chip out the rough shape, and clean it up with the crooked knives. While I had brought both knives to the park, the recently completed Orien Knife outperformed by own homemade version, mostly because of the steeper bevel being better suited to the kiln dried hardwood, birch stock. Here's where the paddle stands now...obviously not an exact replica but I had to work with the limitations of the existing dimensions.


Chipping out the outline; Cleaned up with the crooked knife
The sharper angles will be eventually worked down. But it's a funky shape and I'm curious to see how it'll perform.

SEPT 21, 2010 UPDATE: Paddle is now complete and decorated. See post HERE