Couple new paddles for 2019

[Pringles]

Those are all beautiful!

 

[Cruiser]

Hi Mike ... I hadn't planned on build details, so i don't have as many pics as I would like, but I will try and answer

"how did you achieve the striped colors on the blade of your paddle?"

- First I made up 2" strips in 3 thickneses (1/8,1/4,3/8) and three colours (white/med/dark ) ... next I made a load of ~6.5" pieces out of the strips
- arrange the strips in a pattern that went from mostly dark, to mostly med, to mostly light ... this is a pic part way through assembly, but you get the idea

- take ~2" blocks of strips and glue them together ... they got numbered to be able to keep them in order

- glue the blocks together, clamping to a flat surface ... there is an offset of about 1.25" that I calculated, so each block is set back that far to minimize waste. I confirm the set back by lining up the place where they join with the edge of the work surface

- you end up with something that looks like this ... and you can also see the blanks for the striped paddles on the right

- to get a flat side on irregular shape, I just use a sled through my radial arm saw, you can see the alignment marks on the sled, I wanted to take off just the right amount, to give the inside edge. I can point out here that the 6.5" length was all calculated to minimize waste ...

- I was told online at one point that resawing on a Radial Arm saw wasn't possible .... I took that as a challenge and I found 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics that showed how to do it, it works for me. You can see the flat edge facing down, I also trimmed the tips from the outside edge to allow it to fit in the resaw jig

- once the resaw is complete, i do a quick thickness plane to make sure they are same thickness, then I mark and cut the blade shape slightly oversize (leave the line intact on the shaft side)... do it all in one pass with the band saw or jig saw, save the pieces. I mark up the shaft and glue the halves to the shaft, this would be a bit of a clamping nightmare, but pull those off cuts out ... put them back in position and they give a nice flat clamping surface which is the perfect contour of the paddle halves, once the glue has dried, sand to the line as the final blade shaping

This pic is obviously a little further along in that it has been contoured/shaped, has the epoxy tip installed and is sitting in the ultra sophisticated fiberglassing holder, but that is how I get those kind of angled lines with out a lot of waste material, I hate wasting wood

How the heck do you do that kinda curlie cue inlay? (this is laminated wood, no inlay)

The left paddle was the actual project, the idea was to have the ends of the light material just fade away part way through the blade, I hadn't seen a design that didn't carry the accents all the way to the bottom ... half the fun for me is figuring out how to make a vision ... reality, without being too complicated. The light coloured paddle came into the picture for a single reason, I didn't want to waste the off cuts of the first project, thus the ying and yang paddles were born.

I don't have a lot of build photos for that set of paddles, but it is fairly close to what I just posted, I will try and explain. The whole paddle is in the creation of that blank, nothing else is different, the wood used is white cedar and western red cedar, I hand selected the cedar for it's colour .... why does this matter, because using a wood that is as soft as cedar opens up a whole new level of fitting pieces together, because sanding is very effective for fitting parts.

Here is a step by step (for sake of clarity, assume the left paddle, that is the dark one):
- start with 2 pieces of 2" x 6" that have been cut to provide the correct length for your blade
- draw the blade shape (actually, the half paddle shape) on the dark cedar piece
- make up a template of the shape you want the white cedar insert piece to be
- lay the template on the blade blank and position it so that you are happy with the look and position
- hold the template in place and draw the line for the side closest to the shaft and stop at the template end
- remove the template and continue the line to the end, using the same trajectory and keeping it straight
- cut along the line, on the side away from the shaft and leave the line intact
- I use a Rigid Oscillating Bench Sander to sand just to the line (This step is shop dependent, we all use different stuff, so substitute whatever you use)
- use the dark cedar piece as your new template .. by placing it on 1 side of the white cedar piece and drawing a line ... basically transfering the shape of the dark cedar cut to the white cedar piece
- cut the white cedar piece along the shaft side of the line ... leaving it intact ... then sand to the line as above
- fit the 2 pieces together and make any small adjustments needed and epoxy them together (you can glue, but epoxy will fill any gaps and be stronger IMO, plus coloured epoxy will hide any hiccups)
- go back to the template you made, position it along the dark/white cedar border and draw in the other side on the white cedar
- cut out, from the side away from the shaft, leaving the line intact and sand to the line
- use this new line as the template on the dark cedar (cutoff from previous cut) it won't quite match that cut, but you can likely just mark it and sand it
- adjust as required to make it fit nice, epoxy it in place
- smooth the surface (light planing or just knock off any epoxy/glue to make drawing the shape easier)
- mark the blade shape and proceed as detailed above


Sorry it rambled on a bit, but I think the answers are in there somewhere, lol

Brian

 

[Robin]

Beautiful.

 

[Odyssey]

Wow! That is a beautiful build Cruiser! Thank you for the walk thru. Expert and friendly. Thank you.

 

[Cruiser]

Thank you all for the kind words