A couple of used ZRE paddles came into my possession.
Steve, do tell. I have never got that paddle lucky.
One of them has some nicks and dings in the edges of the blade, with a little fabric showing. Should I just fill the dings with epoxy and sand to fair - or should I wrap a thin layer of carbon over the edges first?
I have laid carbon fiber tow and G/flex epoxy as edging on some wood paddles. The G/flex may be doing more as blade protection than the carbon fiber tow, but the skinny black strip looks sharp on an old wood blade and I have refinished many of our wood sticks with carbon fiber tow and a bead of G/flex.
Some of that is here (sorry about the weirdo symbol text):
http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/...rk-in-progress
In any case I would not want exposed fibers showing, and think you probably need to repair the nicks and dings first. Somehow build the nicked and dinged blade edges back out to near perfect blade curvature, before trying to do any wrap. Which may then be unnecessary.
Maybe some painters tape dams and judicious layers of G/flex laid in place, later sanding down any G/flex imperfections. You could add a little black pigment to the G/flex to hide the honey color on the black carbon edge, without the carbon tow.
BTW, those carbon fiber tow blade edge wrapped Beavertails were Joel and his brothers paddles, from their family-camp Canadian youth 40 years ago.
I have since heard that each of them now absolutely refuses to allow anyone else to even touch
their paddle, and one keeps his hanging protectively in his living room, far from the family camp in Canada.
I can not tell you how pleased I am with that Smeagol
Precious, My Precious paddle refurbishment result.