De Pan

Historic Passamaquoddy Paddle Part 1

About a month ago, I decided to get back to paddle making using a wood I hadn't used in a while - black cherry. The design I wanted to try came from Adney's book - an 1849 Passamaquoddy paddle decorated with a double scroll pattern on an elongated beavertail blade. In Canoe Paddles, there is a rough hand drawn sketch by Liz Regan of this very same pattern. A search revealed that the Peabody Museum also has a version of this paddle in their collection


Adney's sketch - Decorated Passamaquoddy on top


Peabody Museum paddle; Peabody Number 99-12-10/53655
I'm not the first person to try and replicate this paddle. Doug Ingram of Red River Canoe documented his version on his page on historic canoe paddles (UPDATE 2012 - unfortunately the original article is no longer online after switching internet servers). I ended up using Doug's image of the painted blade for my basic pattern.


Adneys's Illustration; Doug Ingram's paddle; Closeup of Blade
courtesy Doug Ingram - http://www.redrivercanoe.ca/
Instead of colouring the beautiful cherry wood with bright green paint however, my intention was to burn the negative image onto the blade, resulting in a look similar to the Fusion Paddle made last year. I also chose a different grip pattern than Adney since I had already put this style of grip on the Omer Birch. Instead, I used a stretched out Malecite grip that I've begun to favour. I free-handed a similar scroll pattern on the grip area. Burning the whole negative pattern on the paddle with just a tiny flow-point tip took a while, but I'm happy with they way it turned out.


Carved out paddle; Initial pattern; Completed blade
I was actually working on filling in the remaining portions on the handle section when my wife's water broke and the chaos of the little one's birth left this paddle in limbo. It's been in my den nearly complete for a while now and I'll always associate this paddle with the early delivery. Below is a shot of the incomplete paddle posing on a glorious Autumn day with the fall colours beginning in Toronto.

Incomplete paddle
Part 2 will be posted whenever I find the time to finish this one off.

UPDATE: November 20, 2008:: Paddle now complete - read Part 2