De Pan

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.

After my last paddle blank making frenzy back in April, I ended up with a load of offcuts and scraps clogging the locker room floor. Since I started getting the stock dressed 4 sides at Century Mill, nearly all these pieces had one side jointed and squared up and could therefore be re-used to make laminated paddles.

I spent an hour or so sorting through most of my inventory and came up with some nice combinations of mixed woods to experient with some more paddle designs. These were layed out on the balcony and dry clamped to get a rough look. In each case, I checked the orientation of the grain by running the block plane lightly over the wood and then marking the preferred shaving direction on the strips. This way when they are glued up, I won't be fighting alternate grain patterns and tearing out the wood.


Marking grain orientation; Poplar & Birch combo; Poplar, Cherry & Birch combo
After laying them out and dry clamping, I could begin to see appropriate paddle shapes coming out. In most cases of course, the scraps of wood were of different lengths so they would need to be cut to size. But, these smaller cutoffs were saved and used as grip material adding to the consistency of the overall look.

There are only 4 blanks pictured in the pic below, but I managed to salvage enough scraps to make 6 laminated paddles in total. The blade designs I've selected include a Western Cree, HBC voyageur, King Island Inuit, Short Maliseet and variations of the classic Ottertail blade. These will be cut to appropriate shape next time I visit The Carpenter's Square and will be posted on separately.


Some of the dry-clamped paddle combos
It'll probably be another week or so before I can glue up each of these.