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I lost the T handle on my favorite paddle this last weekend, a Sawyer handed down from my dad. I’m not nearly good enough with wood to craft a replacement, and I gather these things don’t fall off very often because I don’t see any replacements for sale individually. What are my options here?
I’d also like to take a swing at fixing a paddle I bought at a garage sale (for a buck :D). The blade is badly split in several places, but the rest of it is fine. I’m thinking steam the blade well, clamp/glue the split portions, then maybe fiberglass the blade? Does that sound reasonable or is there a better way? Or is it a waste of time?
It’s occured to me that I could steal the T handle from the one to place on the other, but I wouldn’t know how to release the glue?
Not that I’m any sort of expert, but what I did this past week was to finish my double stack free standing canoe rack with an equipment box that holds my paddles. life vests, ropes, & fishing gear. Then I too repaired 2 garage sale paddles, 1 had both sides of the handle broke off and splits in the blade, the other was missing a side of the blade. What I did was to Gorilla glue blocks of wood and clamp in place. Now I don’t have any sort of state of the art wood shop, I have a skill saw, jigsaw, belt sander, 7″ grinder (with a 4″ flap disk) and a few hand tools; files, rasps, clamps, chisels etc…
I cut out the rough shapes with the jigsaw, ground down the excess wood with a rasp and grinder, then sanded smooth. I haven’t decided on finish yet.
And finally I built my 1st paddle, I have about $10-15 dollars in it so far, again no finish on it yet, I still want to shave the sides of the shaft to lighten it up a few more ounces. I used 1×8 cedar for my blades and closet rod dowels (poplar) for the shafts and T handles. I have the shaft and handle done on the second one, still have to make the blade. I made mine with 10-12 degrees of bend 1st is 50″ and the 2nd will be 60″ the dowel is 1.375 so I have room to profile it down, it’s weighing 27 ounces right now. next I’ll be making a dual paddle for solo tripping.
I cant imagine it being too hard to make a replacement handle.Here are a few pix to show what I’ve done…
I have to do a lil more figur’n to resize so I can attach more than 1 picture at a time :confused:
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