Eva Won

Make or buy? Make! On my last trip to the lumber yard, I picked up a very clear western red cedar board, reserving it for a double blade paddle.

What type of double paddle? The modern kayak paddle with asymmetric dihedral blades? They’re ubiquitous, but also look to me like a blob on the end of a long stick. They seem to have a lot of area and I wonder how tiring they are to use. A native paddle with very long narrow blades, like the Greenland paddle I made last year? They need to be far more vertical in the water than normal paddles, and I’m not sure my boat is narrow enough to use them effectively. Or, something in between?  I’m a traditionalist kind of fuddy fuddy and found the traditional canoe paddle shape appealing. I took my pattern from Graham Warren and David Gidmark’s book about Canoe Paddles. They have many interesting paddle patterns in the book, but only one for a double paddle, and I liked it.

The end result is 90.5 inches long (230 cm), with blades than measure 21 inches by 5 and 3/4 inches (55 cm x 15 cm), yielding about 105 square inches per paddle, as compared to 115-130 for modern kayak paddles. These blades are longer and narrower than modern kayak blades, but not as long and narrow as Greenland blades. The shaft is 1 and 1/2 by 1 and 1/4 inch, and has a cross section that is egg shaped. The completed paddle weighs 40 ounces, as compared to 33-38 for modern kayak paddles. Both blades are in the same plane, no feathering.

That stick of lumber wasn’t wide enough to make the paddle as one piece. So, I ripped of the shaft (using my handy frame saw), and then cut the remainder into four parts. Those yielded more than enough material for the blades when glued up.

Simple plywood patterns, lofted from the above mentioned book, provide guides for cutting the blades (with my handy bow saw) and for roughing the curved shape of the blade (with my handy Stanley #40 scrub plane).

This is a good place to rave about the scrub plane. Christopher Schwarz found it “curious” and decided its best use was for rough trimming the edges of construction lumber instead of ripping them. He wasn’t too keen on using it for reducing a board’s thickness. On the other hand, BobRozaieski was horrified by what it did to his lumber. Unlike either of them, I find the scrub just fine for reducing thickness. It can take out thick, well controlled, shavings. Yes, it leaves a furrowed surface, but that’s easily cleaned up in the next step. I cut the rough curved shape in these blades with the scrub plane in less time than it would have taken to set up and use a resawing technique on the band saw. A spoke shave cleaned up the furrows afterward.

Putting a little bit of spoon dishing into the power face of the paddles was done with those same two tools, the scrub plane and the spoke shave. In this case, using them at an extreme skew and with more blade protrusion than normal allowed for creating concavity. Vintage rounded blade spoke shaves have gotten rare, but I’ll find one some day and make this task easier.

Another of the handy things in Warren and Gidmark’s book is a pattern for a curved sanding block. The french curve shape makes it very easy to sand all sorts of curves. It is especially good at the throat area, where the loom meets the blade. The block is scaled so that a strip cut from the width of a standard sheet of sandpaper fits neatly in the wedged notches. This block is my new best friend for the wearisome work of sanding.

Shaping the shaft is the usual 8 siding, then 16 siding, then sanding shoe-shine style. The only difference here was using an egg shaped pattern rather than a fully symmetrical pattern. It fits the hands very comfortably.

Rough sanding, medium sanding, and fine sanding was followed with four coats of pure tung oil. The first two coats were thinned with mineral spirits for better absorption. The last to used normal strength. By the way, when using pure tung oil be sure to wipe it all off. Don’t leave a wet coat; it will take three eons to dry. Let the coat sit for 15 minutes. Then, rub it off. Then, buff until dry. Do it again tomorrow.

I have no idea of whether this will be the right paddle for this boat. If not, I can try another variation until I find what works best. Making a paddle is easy, quick, inexpensive, and very satisfying. It’s also a good thing to do while waiting for paint to dry.

Lastly, spread those oily rags out flat until they are completely dry… so dry they are stiff. Otherwise, they can spontaneously combust.

Dating myself: Quite an interesting group of “Borscht Belt” comedians rose up in the middle of the last century. One of them, Sam Levenson, based his comedy on the day-to-day experiences of growing up poor in Brooklyn. His book, “Everything But Money” tells these many of stories in a humorous and comforting style. My favorite routine of his is “One More Thing,” which tells of little Sam getting ready to go out and play. Every time he reaches the door, Mama says, “One more thing…” and launches into long advice about one of life’s hazards. I can’t remember whether young Sam ever made it outside to play.

One more thing for the boat: Harry Bryan, the boat’s designer, suggested sitting on the bottom and advised using a cushion for a seat. That advice sounds practical, but I became interested in using a cane seat as is traditional for canoes. So, that became one more thing to do … before we go out to play.

Maybe I’ll learn to cane a seat some day, but for now, I’m happy to buy one ready made. The seat I selected is from Ed’s Canoe. It is a beautifully contoured seat made with an ash frame. The geometry of this boat isn’t suited for the usual mounting, which hangs the seat from the gunwales. Instead, I mounted the seat on  rails that I epoxied to the bottom of the boat.

The combination of the seat, the backrest, and the adjustable footrest makes for a very comfortable posittion.

Finishing is going smoothly, with only a slight detour.

My choice of finish is “bright” for the interior and decks and paint for the hull. There are lots of options for “bright,” and I decided upon one that is closer to work boat than show boat. For a show boat, one can tediously work up to 12 coats of fine varnish. That’s beyond my patience, and I want to get in the water some time this century. Instead, I decided to use Sikkens Marine Cetol, an alkyd resin that builds much faster than varnish. Three coats will do instead of twelve. I know the stuff is tough because I helped my son strip some of it off a rustic swing last summer. Tenacious stuff! Looking back on notes I took while at the Wooden Boat School, I was amused to see that Greg said this about Cetol, “The first coat will scare you.” Yep. It does. The first coat is uneven and blotching from the way the material sinks in. It evens out with additional coats. Cetol has a bit more pigment, resulting in an amber cast that’s not as clear as plain varnish.  The photo shows two coats.

There’s a slight delay for the hull paint. I ordered, and received, it way back in April. One small problem. Wrong color. Kirby is a brand of marine paints that is now being run by the 4th or 5th generation George Kirby. I saw Kirby color chips, real ones, last spring and decided on a color. When I ordered from Jamestown Distributors, I sought out that color … as indicated on the tiny little swatches on their web site. That was a mistake! The swatches Jamestown uses are not correct. Before opening the can, something prodded me to look at Kirby’s online color chart. Ouch, the #37 Permanent Green that I ordered was not the #12 Bottle Green I wanted.

Jamestown’s policy says they will authorize returns within 30 days, but not for certain items, such as paint. Yet, even though this was paint and the order well beyond the 30 day period, they said “send it back.” No questions, no fuss. They have always treated me well, and going beyond the letter of their policy is better than I expected. Thank You Jamestown Distributors. The correct color is on a UPS truck somewhere.

Lesson: Check and double check, maybe even triple check, paint colors and be very careful about what you see on web pages. Going back to those class notes, I found “#12 Bottle Green” as a marginal note.