Two-piece wood canoe pole

Another side project this season was to construct a two piece, wooden canoe pole. My hope with this piece of gear was to have a functional pole that could breakdown for transport and be used in camp for a tarp shelter or with the baker tent.

Inspired by RavenJester's detailed tutorial, "Building aTwo-piece Home Depot Canoe Pole", I set about doing some research for the all important ferrule to connect the pieces. RavenJester's writeup mentioned a stainless steel one but I couldn't source one with decent shipping.

Instead, I ended up going a bit more high tech and order a carbon fibre ferrule meant for the thicker shaft of Greenland style kayak paddles. With a 35.81mm inner diameter and 38.6mm outer diameter, it would work nicely with the roughly 1.5" intended diameter of the spruce / fir poles.

Took some time to sort through the pile of lumber, but in the end scored a real nice piece of 2x10x8 at the local Home Depot . The board had very straight grain lines along one side with the added bonus of being knot-free in that section. I ripped two 1.5" strips and then worked the pieces round a crooked knife. This was much earlier in the season when the lawn was in good shape...

Once worked down and lightly sanded, the two pieces of the ferrule were epoxied into place. As a test, I stood on the porch steps and leaned on the pole as if pushing upstream in a hard current. The connection felt pretty solid and the poles flexed pretty evenly. In the end, I messed up a bit of the calculations so that one piece is a few inches taller than the other. I had forgotten to factor in the lag bolt at the foot.

The wood has yet to be treated. I'm thinking of painting some has marks on the bottom portion every foot or so to be able to gauge the depth of the stream while poling.

This pole is actually longer than my 11 foot one-piece made back in 2010. It's a tad over 12 feet. For the shoe I salvaged a piece of copper pipe I found in a box a scrap metal left out by a neighbour on garbage day. It has an outer diameter of  1-3/8" so I didn't have to shave the bottom of the pole too much. A large washer, lag screw and some bolts and the homemade foot is good to go.

Copper and lag bolt shoe

Hoping a spring poling trip will be in the cards...