CCM Makers Paddle Video

Found a short video from the Canadian Canoe Museum showcasing a volunteer carving paddles in their museum workshop. In the quick, 1:27 long teaser, there are multiple shots of completed paddles adorning the wall.

There are two paddles on the wall which feature etched double curve motifs like the Peabody Museum's c1849 Passamaquoddy Paddle. On the right side, a few pointed paddles stand out with their painted black and red decoration. At the 0:19 mark there is a closeup of some more paddles, a few of which feature the lovely pyrographic artwork of Cara Jordan (previous post here)

19th-20th Century Arctic Wooden Kayak Paddle

This blog is mainly devoted to single blade canoe paddles, but occasionally a double-bladed paddle peaks my interest. The Cobbs Auctioneers are having a Fine Art, Antiques & Sporting auction on April 30th, 2016 (commencing 10:00 AM EDT). Included in the catalog is a late 19th/early 20th C Inuit Kayak paddle with interesting blade designs and decorative carvings on the centre of the loom.

 Description: Inuit Carved Wood Kayak Paddle, double bladed with a central carved block to identify the owner, 76" long , identified with the Attu Islands area due the unusual shape of the paddle blades, good old finish, 19th/20thC 

The closeup of the central part showcases the subtle carving. The round grip shafts transition into a square central part marked with 4 cross marks. The provided description claims this is a mark to identify the owner.

The shaft tapers right before meeting the blade. The blade itself features a subtle indent about half way down the sides with angular tips. This design might make for an interesting single blade pattern which in theory would have a stiffer upper portion and a more flexible feel near the tip.

Not sure about the ethnographic identification about this being an Inuit paddle though. The description mentions that paddle shape is traced to the Attu Islands area which is traditionally Aleut territory, a similar but distinctive sub-Arctic culture from Canadian / Greenland Inuit peoples.

Aleut Kayak Paddle - Part 2

One incomplete paddle project that's been haunting me lately was the attempt at an Aleut style kayak paddle made with some left over walnut and maple stock (see the Part 1 post). The blank was cut out in the fall of '07, but the actual carving didn't being in ernest until the late Spring of '08. With the frustration of working with a a wavy grained wood that I shouldn't have used in retrospect, the paddle has been sitting and collecting dust in the locker room for months now. So in an effort to finish what was started, I decided to forgo any major pyrography decoration (wouldn't show up will with this dark piece of walnut anyway) and simply sanded it down and oiled it.

Aleut kayak paddles tend to have an interested off centered grip area with a spine ridge running the length of the blade. Here are some pics to illustrate this:


The offset laminated loom


Two shots of the blade powerface


Backside and Powerface pics
I'm not much a kayak paddler anyway, but intend to give this one a test trial in the spring and will report back then.

17th Century Kayak Paddle Replica - Part 3

I've been steadily working on the 17th Century Kayak Paddle Replica begun at the beginning of May. The blades have all been shaved down to the appropriate thickness and the oval shaped shaft has been sanded down. With the paddle wetted and re-sanded, it was time to begin the decoration.


Shaving completed; Wetting the grain
The group requesting this for their retiring principal wanted a loon image. Basswood is a fantastic wood for pyrography and its light colour and tight grain mean a great contrast with darkened tones. Here's the loon image I came up with...


Loon image on one blade
For the other blade, the group decided on an inspirational quote which was expanded to appropriate size using the Monotype Corsiva font on MS Word. I wish I could free hand, but I'm no Calligrapher. I'm embarassed to say I had no idea who the author of the quote was (Harvey Firestone, founder of Firestone Tire Co.) but my excuse is that I spend more time paddling on the water than driving all day on premium brand rubber tires.


The group's inspirational quote
After varnishing with 5 coats of Glossy Minwax® Helmsman® Spar Urethane (sanding between each coat with 0000 Fine Steel Wool) I used some tan coloured leather lace to tie 3-lead-5-bight decorative Turk’s Head knots for drip rings. These were sealed in place with a little more varnish to prevent the leather from swelling when it gets wet.


The unvarnished and varnished pics


Leather Turk's Head drip ring - unvarnished

Kind of interesting given my Turkish heritage that absolutely no one in Turkey has worn a turban since 1826. That year, Sultan Mahmut II banned the turban as a symbol of growing religious authority and replaced it with the more "modern" Fez which in turn was later banned by Ataturk as a symbol of corrupt feudalism of the Ottoman era. Today only tacky tourists and traditional ice cream vendors in touristy areas walk around with these scarlet monstrosities. On my last visit to the homeland back in '06, I spent some quality peaceful time exploring neglected Ottoman graveyards that were off the tourist trail. Ottoman headstones are amazing works of art with elaborate stone carvings written in the poetic (but now a forgotten old Ottoman Script). I had been studying Ottoman Turkish for about a year before my trip just so I could translate the various inscriptions all over Istanbul. Interesting that each headstone is decorated with replicas of the the headgear of the deceased as a sign of rank and position in society. You could tell who died before 1826 (Turbaned gravestone) with those who passed away after (Fezzed headstones) with those who died in the Republican era (Plain grave marker). If anyone cares to know, there's a Flickr Group devoted to this esoteric artform called Mezar Taslari with some interesting shots submitted by members.

Anyway, I digress...Designing and working on this paddle has been a rewarding experience, especially since it was commissioned for a well deserving recipient who'll hopefully enjoy it during his retirement.


Posing with the work before it's off to its new owner

By the way, if any reader cares to read the previous postings on this paddle, check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Paddle Edging Idea

While working on my model canoe, I've also been intently following Bryan's Boat Building & Paddling Blog while he constructed a kayak (a Flea) for his two beautiful daughters. He's now moved on to finalizing the production of custom paddles for the girls that began with a creative painting session on the blades.

In his followup post, he documents a creative idea for protecting the edging around the blades - using glued copper wire around the entire edge of the blade which is later protected with epoxy. The pics on his page document the process nicely and while I'm not much of a kayak paddler, his technique has me intrigued for experimenting with the idea in the future. Thanks for the idea Bryan and let us all know how the official launch goes!

17th Century Kayak Paddle Replica - Part 2

While I had some time today, I began working on the 17th C. Paddle Replica commission piece. It took 4 days to securely bend and glueup all the cherry edges because of my limited number of clamps. The whole process went smoothly enought although there were some small gaps left on the tips where the strips didn't sit flush with the curvature of the paddle.


Clamped cherry edges
For the exposed basswood tips, I thought I would use some of the left over cherry bits and glue them edgewise for strength. I had cut two pieces that would fit into the tip areas, shaped the edges with a rasp, and put them into position. Given the fact that clamping tightly would not be an option here, I ended up using some 5-minutes Epoxy in this area which fills gaps nicely and doesn't need clamping. At this stage, it looks pretty crappy but I'm confident that I can shape it into a decent tip. I'm thinking of covering it in a layer of epoxy thickened with with sawdust filler when it is finally shaped to form a bit of resin tip from a technique I read about on BlueStem Paddler.


Cherry tips cut out; Epoxied into position
Today was a decent day in Toronto, so I ended up on the balcony for some rough planing. The basswood is really easy to carve and the cherry isn't bad either. After a short time I began drowning in shavings and had quickly worked both blades down to the level where I'll continue with the spokeshave later.


Shaving down the blades; The springtime view of the city

JUNE 19/08 Update: Paddle is now complete and final part has been posted

17th Century Kayak Paddle Replica - Part 1

My Arctic buddy Anne recently commissioned a paddle from me for a retiring school Principal who's taking up kayaking. While the tiring experience with my still-unfinished Aleut paddle had me swore off double blades for a while, I figured that trying out a new constuction technique would maybe make it worth getting back into the double blade stuff.

I found a great little page documenting traditional kayak and paddle designs built by Harvey Golden. His page on Replica Traditional Paddles has some wonderful photos. Inspired by his work, I decided to try a 17th Century West Greenland paddle (no.13 on his main pic). This was quite different than most Greenland paddles marketed today which are quite linear, narrow and simple to build. This one looked like two mini ottertail blades on an elongated shaft. In addition, Harvey's replica had plastic edging to mimic the whalebone edging used by many Inuit.

For this piece, I went with one of the lightest woods suitable for paddlemaking - Basswood, also known as American Lime (Tilia americana).

Now that I think of it, I could have easily obtained some authentic whale bone edging last summer as a huge Bowhead whale carcass (decomposing for at least 4-5 years according to our Arctic guides) had washed up on shore near our Basecamp on uninhabitated Somerset Island. My Flickr album shows some pics of the huge bones of this behemoth. The stinky mess was the source of our 30+ polar bear sightings during the week and wouldn't have been appropriate to take back as a souvenir. There were also some "beached" whale bones located some 20km inland and at 75m above sea level in a virtual arctic desert where the ocean once covered. Our guide mentioned a sample of the bones had been dated at 7000 years old and I'm not a believer in taking such dated and well preserved relics away from their site of origin (like some sort of whale grave robber).


Beached bowhead carcass; 7000 year old whale bones at 75m above sea level
Instead of using whale bone, I thought laminating a thin strip of cherry edging around the blade would be both decorative and functional, as basswood is light but not very durable. This would mean that the cherry would likely need to be steam-bent and glued around the gentle curve of the blades - a process I've never tried but seemed achievable.


The Basswood blank; Strip of cherry for edging
I figured I could Macgyver a basic steaming setup using some stuff in storage. Specifically - the single burner electic stovetop obtained earlier, a large metal tea kettle with cylindrical spout, and some plastic tubing. I set it up on a wooden plank layed across an open drawer in the kitchen so that the steaming tube would point under the exhaust fan to suck up the excess steam. With this rig, I ended up steaming a single piece of cherry strip that had been pre-soaked overnight in the tub.


The steaming setup
While the strip was steaming, I prepared the table with some waxed paper. I laminated this inside because the rain had moved in and the balcony wasn't feasible. With all my clamps layed out, I realized that I'd need a square edge to clamp properly. Good thing I had kept the blade off-cuts from my bandsaw session at the Carpenter's Square. Using one such scrap piece, I could clamp at least one edge square. By the time I had layed the glue down the centermark, the cherry strip had been steaming for a little over 10 minutes. It was already quite soft and somewhat pliable, so it was immediatedly bent around the edge, clamped loosely with trigger clamps, and then secured tightly with stronger F-Clamps.


Glueing down the centre line; Clamping; Underside showing smooth bend
An inch of cherry strip was purposely left to protude past the blade end because I intend to laminate a cherry tip after the edges are done. Normally this polyurethane glue completely sets in 2 hours but I'll be leaving the clamps on for a full day to let the cherry properly dry out. Given my limited number of clamps, I'll only be able to do one edge a day. But if the others work as easily as this was, the carving process will be good to go very shortly

MAY 8/08 Update: Part 2 has been posted

Aleut Kayak Paddle - Part 1

Back to paddlemaking. A few months ago, I wrote a post documenting an attempt to construct a laminated Greenland Style kayak paddle. For this project, I had obtained 1-1/8" strips of walnut & poplar at Century Mill as well as a large, narrow piece of walnut stock (dressed to 4" x 96" x 1-1/8") with the intention of making a solid one-piece if the lamination experiment failed (which it didn't). Soon after I had decided to carve another kayak paddle with this suitable walnut stock and settled on a different style...an Aleut (Alaskan Inuit) style of blade.



A typical aleut paddle shape

Searches on the net revealed that this paddle is unique amongst traditional kayak-faring peoples in that it is a non-symmetrical paddle with only one side of the blade used as the power face. The blades are long (30+") linear extensions from the loom with full lengthwise spines forming a noticable ridge. The backface of the blades are curved similar to modern touring paddles, albeit on a much more shallow gradient.

After checking out some pages, like Lew Plumme's recreation of an Aleut Paddle in the Finland National Musuem as well as Wolgang Brink's paddle making pages, I figured it would be an interested project. Plans were hard to come by, but I did manage to find an online reprint of David Zimmerly's 1984 Sea Kayaker article entitled "Arctic Paddle Design" with a specific page (.pdf format) documenting an Aleut design. I also luckily came across the page of Swedish paddle expert, Bjorn Thomasson, who had some an Aleut plan (.pdf) as well as a few others. Thomasson's well drawn plan with side view, dimensional info, and loom cross-section diagram was the one I followed, although I was limited with the confines of my walnut piece. The linear lines of the blade were too similar to the Greenland Paddle I had already made so improvised and made the blades more similar to stretched beavertail designs. Because of the board's length, cutting out the blank by hand took a frustratingly huge amount of time. I should mention that this was done back in the Fall of '07. After exhausting myself out cutting the blank, I simply stored the paddle in the locker-room until I was ready to tackle this bigger job.


Cutting out blank & the warped paddle after storage
Flash forward a few months and decided it was time to finish this project, only to find out that blank had warped while being stored. The grain (especially in the loom) was slightly curved to one side but I had thought that because it seemed mostly contained, the paddle would still turn out ok. A new off-centre line had to be drawn which made affected the paddle's symmetry. Anyway, the paddle now "sags" a bit when held at the center, but it's not too bad so the paddle is still salvageable in my opinion.

After planing down the blades it was time to begin carving out the ridge. This was done with the trusty hook knife. Again, this walnut piece tended to have a bit of wavy grain (in retrospect I wouldn't have bought it had I paid more careful attention) so the wood tended to tear out unevenly. Despite my best efforts, the spine region is not perfectly straight and I honestly believe it could only be achieved with power tools (like a router) or by expert woodcarving hands (not at that level yet).


Planing down one side & carving out the spine
At this point the ugly, rough worked had to be sanded down and to do an even job along the ridge, I had wrapped a piece of 1-1/4" scrap dowel with 60 grit coarse sandpaper. After just a few passes on the blade... PAIN!!!! Two quarter inch slivers of wood jammed under my fingernail! Instant blood letting of course but at the time, my wife was taking a much deserved nap inside and I didn't want to wake her...so I toughed it out in silence, grabed some tweezers and yanked the slivers out (all the while tearing out some fingernail bed flesh). The bleeding stoped with simple pressure and a day later the swollen nailbed receded leaving behind a mark showing how deep the wood got embedded. Guess my manly pain suppression worked because she didn't notice a thing. Hand sanding was not the way to go, so I scrounged for a solution and came across a sanding disk attachment to a drill in the growing tool pile. This vertical disk allowed for close sanding next to the spine and smoothed out the bumps in no time.


Sanding with dowel, fingernail aftermath, sanding with drill attachment

The other error I had miscalculated is that the stock had been planed down to 1 1/8" thickness (the standard thickness I've been using for canoe paddle shafts). The Aleut loom however is a distictly oval shape (almost egg shaped) and plans clearly cite a thicker dimensions (Zimmerly: 4.1cm = 1 5/8"; Thomasson: 3.1cm = 1 7/32"). To achieve this I would have to laminate another strip onto the loom. Rather than use walnut for this, a contrasting piece of scrap maple was cut and glued.


Laminating maple onto the loom
This 1-1/8" square piece meant that the total loom thickness was now 2-1/4" and of course would need to be planed down. I decided on a thicker loom and used Zimmerly's measurement of 1-5/8". A line was drawn to reflect this desired thickness. The Gorilla Glue foamed quite vigoursly and seeped out the edges, making the lamination job look quit messy. However, I knew that the egg-shaped cross-section of the loom would mean these unsightly glue blobs would be planed off. Quite easy with handtools which is why I enjoy using this glue rather than epoxy.


Drawn thickness line & one side smoothed
At this stage, the loom was left purposely thick and the paddle turned over to shape the backsides of the blades. As mentioned previously, the Aleut paddles had concave powerfaces and convex sided back face. This meant using the spokeshake to camber the backside and result in a curved surface. The pics really don't show this well.


Curved blade views

To be honest, this double blade has been quite tedious to work and the spine ridge has taken a toll on my patience. I've decided to take a bit of a break from finishing this one and will probably come back to it after I've spent more time on my current distraction with the Birchbark canoe model.

UPDATE - November 1, 2008: The paddle is now complete - Read Part 2.

Laminated Greenland Kayak Paddle

I've been on a couple kayaking day trips which have been great, but I'm much happier kneeling in a canoe with a single blade paddle controlling all the movement. The sitting position in a kayak wreaks havoc on my back. Put me in a canoe on the other hand, and I can kneel on my heels for hours without discomfort. Given the popularity of kayaking over canoeing in recent times, I guess I'm in the minority. In addition, I've always found that the feathered, euro blade, plastic paddles used in modern kayak touring seem designed just to scoop as much water as possible to power you through the water. They've always been too cumbersome for underwater recoveries and finesse strokes to propel the watercraft. The simplistic but graceful lines of the Greenland Inuit kayak paddle on the other hand, seems much more ergonomic and suited to the task of long distance paddling and given my new found woodworking confidence with the single blades, I thought I would give a shot at making one.

There are plenty of sources on the net to guide the newbie. The two I relied on included Chuck Holst's guide on the Greenland Paddle and Matt Johnson's Video on the topic. Most sources recommend carving out of 2x4 cedar obtained at a home building store, but I wanted to dive into making laminated paddles and figured this would be relatively easy since the blade shapes are quite narrow (under 3.5 inches) and simple in shape.

I started off with a trip to Century Mill for some new stock. I ended up getting some maple, poplar, and walnut pieces jointed and planed into 1 1/8th strips. I chose this dimension because this is also the size for my canoe paddle shafts and wanted to have some for intended laminated canoe paddles down the road. I also scored some very affordable walnut and maple pieces by rummaging through their "shorts" pile...discarded pieces cut from other stock. In many cases, these were perfectly suited to rip into strips to form blade or grip areas. At up to a 70% discout these were great deals on otherwise "discarded" wood.

After getting the strips home, I selected the best one (a 90 inch Yellow Poplar strip) for the core and begun measuring & using the walnut strips for the blade sections.

There a many debates about the best adhesives with most people siding with epoxy. But given that this was my first attempt, I didn't want to get jugs of the mixing formulas in case the experience was a bust. Also, epoxy cures so hard that it can blunt hand tools quickly so I opted for a waterproof polyurethane glue (Gorilla Glue) that seemed appropriate for water-based application like a paddle.

After measuring the strips, I clamped each side of the paddle by vertically stacking them and applying clamps to the flat surface of the granite tabletop on the balcony (covered in wax paper to prevent any drips from supergluing to the table). After the 24 full cure time, I clamped the other side in the same fashion. Within 2 days I had finished the laminating process and begun to cut the rough shape of the blades with the trust hand saw and the blank was ready for shaping.




Shaping the blade was a breeze after working on the larger, irregular shaped canoe paddles. A simple cambering process and general tapering of the blade resulted in a paddle I was quite happy with. Carving the shaft (loom) of the paddle followed the same logic as a canoe paddle, except I used a rasp to slightly angle where the walnut blades met the poplar core, resulting in tiny "shoulders" where one grips the paddle during use.Most sources also mention rounding the tip into a semicircle shape, but I felt that the whole angular and linear shape of the paddle would be broken by this, so I left the edges straight.

On my 2007 Arctic Trip, we sea kayaked twice...once quickly spotting a solitary ringed seal and then a second time visiting an Arctic Tern rookery on tiny offshore island...now that was amazing! The terns are one of the most graceful and acrobatic birds I've ever seen. They "nest" on the island by simply laying well camouflaged eggs on the bare rocks. Eventually, they hatch into even more camouflaged chicks and we had to literately watch each step on the island for fear of stepping on them by mistake, all the while their protective parents would dive bomb and miss striking our heads by mere inches. I decided to decorate my inuit style paddle with an Arctic Tern burning on one blade and an Inukshuk symbol on the other to comemmorate my trip to Nunavut.


The completed paddle sanded down


Arctic Tern burning on one blade


Inukshuk burning on the other blade


Decorating the wall before varnishing and test run in the spring

May 5/08 UPDATE: This paddle has now been varnished. View it here.