new here: building a paddle

[RustDeamon]

I’ve always been a fan of built not bought, and I am a hardcore bass fisherman, I also dont have a ton of extra money floating around to buy “top of the line”. I hate cheap paddles they always break when you need them the most. So I dug out a bunch of maple I had sitting around and decided to make my own “top of the line” paddles. I am very familiar with most concepts of wood working so I did some research on how paddles are built, laid out, and fit to the person.

this project is underway started yesterday. I don’t rush anything so it may take me a couple weeks to make just this one paddle. but here is where I am at.

I took three pieces of maple all 3 with different grain runs, on curving left one, curving right, and one straight. and laminated them together to make a starting haft that is about 2 inches wide (obviously needs to be slimmed down for the final product, but I would rather start with too much wood than not enough)

then I cut a 1.5 degree bevel on both sides of the bottom 1/3 of the haft. as well as a 1.5 degree bevel on both sections for the blade. so each side of the blade comes off at 3 degrees from square at the center of the blade (or rather 1 inch from center).

here is a picture of what I have so far.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]55[/ATTACH]

[bamaboy]

That’s got a lot of potential! Cant wait to see it finished, I finished my 1st today and started the 2nd longer one, but took a much simpler approach so they wont be as pretty as laminating, I’ll eventually work into that when I find some pretty wood. I used poplar closet dowels and 1×8 cedar for my blades.

[Author]

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