De Pan

New Paddle Blanks

After picking up my new batch of wood last week, I've been eagerly anticipating carving another set of paddles. There are still plenty of blade and grip designs yet to try, and in a fury of creativity, I quickly chose and drew out the designs for 7 new paddles.

Earlier today, I ended up spending 3 hours at The Carpenter's Square DIY workshop cutting out the blanks with the bandsaw. In addition I learned the use of a Jointer and Table Saw to square the edges on cutoffs and rip some of the stock into 1/4" strips for future laminated paddles.


New Blanks lined up
The designs (left to right) are Cherry Passamaquoddy Blade with Maliseet Grip; Cherry Passamoquoddy Blade with Athabascan Grip; Birch Attikamek (Tetes de Boule); Birch Beothuk with bobble grip; Birch King Island Single Kayak Blade (a commission piece); Walnut-Poplar Voyageur with tripper grip; Cherry-Poplar-Walnut Beavertail with an Assymetrical grip of my own design. I also cut out a Basswood double bladed kayak for another commission but it just wouldn't fit in the photo. This might be the 1st paddle I work on as there's a deadline for its completion (more photos in another post)

In addition, I still have some blanks left over from that I haven't gotten to yet. These include a Maple-Walnut Whitewater with Battenkill grip; Soft Maple Northwoods; and Poplar Diamond Passamaquoddy. The Walnut-Poplar blank (second from the left) eventually became the Adirondack Owl Paddle made back in March


Older blanks still waiting to be carved

The process of cutting out these single piece paddles created a bunch of offcuts that I saved for use in further laminated blades and other projects. In fact, I ended up using some of the previous offcuts in my growing scraps pile to make miniature paddles for decoration with my bark canoe model. I also used pieces that weren't suitable for paddle making anymore to cut out some spoon blanks. I'll probably end up carving these when I'm back up North and need a TV/Internet/Mass media break.


Spoon blanks and quarter-scale paddle blanks

Looks like there will be flurry of wood-working activity in the weeks to come.