Just wondering if anyone has noticed a decline in Sanborn’s attention to detail. I just bought a Nessmuk cedar paddle at Canoecopia. I’ve been wanting one, and the price was right. However, I am not impressed with the quality of the finish on it - and I did ransack through the ones of the length I needed, to try to find the best-looking one. I’ve read about how nice the Sanborn paddles are, and am wondering if a) quality is slipping, or b) they cranked out a pile of paddles for the show really quickly, and this isn’t representative of their usual product. Or c) they brought a bunch of seconds. Or d) they’ve always been like this, and I shouldn’t be so picky.
The paddle itself seems very nice, it’s just the uneven, blotchy finish and slightly rough texture on the blade. And the carbon side isn’t evenly or fully coated - should that be smooth, or should I be able to feel the weave? Maybe an attempt to keep the weight down resulting in an uneven finish? It is 12.6 oz on my kitchen scale. I bought it because the price was better than I could order one and have it shipped for, and I could sand it and put another coat of finish on it myself if need be. I can‘t imagine it will cause any paddling issues. It just isn’t as pretty overall as I had hoped, and the wood underneath clearly is.![Crying face :cry: 😢](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f622.png)
The paddle itself seems very nice, it’s just the uneven, blotchy finish and slightly rough texture on the blade. And the carbon side isn’t evenly or fully coated - should that be smooth, or should I be able to feel the weave? Maybe an attempt to keep the weight down resulting in an uneven finish? It is 12.6 oz on my kitchen scale. I bought it because the price was better than I could order one and have it shipped for, and I could sand it and put another coat of finish on it myself if need be. I can‘t imagine it will cause any paddling issues. It just isn’t as pretty overall as I had hoped, and the wood underneath clearly is.
![Crying face :cry: 😢](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f622.png)