Shoutout to Bending Branches and ZRE

[gumpus]

I want to award mega kudos and bonus points to both Bending Branches and ZRE for excellent customer service.

Some years back Bending Branches was nice enough to sell me 2 symmetric wood grips that I used when shortening a couple of carbon fiber paddles. When I reached out again recently they sold me 4 more at same price as before. There are not a lot of options out there for comfy symmetric grips (pic).

Then Chad Swander, the new owner of ZRE, contacted me after I made some inquiries and he was.kind enough to do some research on some older (he may have said "really old") symmetric Zavs I have (pic) and he told me the blade was outsourced and the supplier went out of business and the tooling is lost.

So thanks to Bending Branches and ZRE I now have 2 very nice fully symmetrical paddles back in service plus I know the history of the symmetric blade. With both companies being under new ownership I'm just delighted to see the excellent customer service.

 

[tketcham]

Excellent! Good to know that the Bending Branches grips fit a Zaveral shaft. I was thinking of doing the same with my ZRE straight paddle, which I want to shorten to use on shallow streams. The BB grips aren't ideal for palm rolling but I like them better than the hit-and-switch grips Zaveral uses. I was going to buy another BB grip to use but instead I'll just reuse a grip I'd cut off a BB Sunburst paddle. I noticed that Bending Branches now uses a carbon fiber grip on the Sunburst but it isn't clear from their website that it's still symmetrical.

 

[gumpus]

I like that you can shape the stub since every carbon fiber paddle I've come across has a different inside size and shape. Although not as light as carbon fiber they are light for wood and the weight improves the balance of a paddle so it's not a bad tradeoff. Unfortunately those grips are now discontinued and no longer available (like the paddles I put them on) since Bending Branches sold their last ones to me and another site member.

There are a couple of interesting and inexpensive options on Amazon that I'd be tempted to try.