Making your own paddle

I've been making paddles as a hobby, usually just carving them out of single blank of wood (no bends or bent shafts on these). I am now trying to (expand my skill set to) make laminated paddles and have bought some balsa to add into the blades (along with ash, white cedar and red cedar). Anybody know if there will be a failure between the laminations of the balsa with the other woods if I don't add fiberglass, kevlar or carbon over the blade? Or should I just stay with using the laminations of the other harder woods? The wood is expensive so I'd rather not make something that I'm going break....but don't really want to cover up the blade with carbon or kevlar either. If I have to use fiberglass...what type of cloth and weight is good? Epoxies, resins, uv polyurathane...any reccomendations. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Submitted by Sloughcanoe on Sat, 06/05/2010 - 4:37am



I am only a hobby builder too so i can really only tell you what worked for me.

I used a combination of redwood and yellow cedar laminated together for the shaft. Took a bunch of thin pieces of wood sandwiched them together. Paired this with a blasa blade. This paddle worked ok and was super light but I ended up snapping the shaft about two or three miles off shore and was lucky to get back. Blade was covered both sides with carbon. Shaft was re-enforced with carbon on the bottom 5 inches or so and snapped right above that point.

Next paddle was poplar shaft with carbon/glass covering a balsa blade. This combination was bomb proof. Used 4oz glass and whatever scrap carbon I could find. One side of the blade was covered in glass, the other in carbon. Could still see the balsa easily through the laminate. The blade on this paddle ended up being too big for me...

Both were double bend paddles. Not sure about the angles I used. Wrote it down somewhere. I have heard builders in hawaii use poplar for the shaft. Seems to be a good compromise between weight and, strength. Not sure what kinds of wood Tahitian builders use. If you use 2 oz glass or something like that you should be able to make it nearly invisible so your wood still shows through. I used gorilla glue with clamps for all my wood joining.

Hope this helps. One thing I learned is that a really good paddle is really hard to make. Made me appreciate my Makana 110% more!


#1 Sat, 06/05/2010 - 10:35am


Sloughcanoe,
You have some fine timbers there to work with, and produce a strong paddle, as well as having the right species of timber you have to be sure that the pieces of timber are milled correctly and that you are using the grain in the right direction, it's a bit too complicated to explain here but any good woodworking book would contain chapter on sawing and milling and orientation of the grain for maximum strength.
A good 2 pack epoxy glue( west systems) will glue all timbers the only issue that may arise is "degreasing" certain oily timbers prior to gluing up, you shouldn't need to use glass over the top if the finished paddle is sealed well with a varnish or similar, I have 2 beautiful paddles from Huahine rame and they are just varnish over local Tahitian timbers
Good luck and post a photo when you are done.


#2 Sat, 06/05/2010 - 12:34pm


Thanks guys for the advice. I'm going to make a few without glass first and test. I'll post pics when I'm done.


#3 Sat, 06/05/2010 - 2:03pm


I just Love this Video,


#4 Sat, 06/05/2010 - 5:08pm


Mulus...thanks. Canoe paddles and menomin!! That's a pretty good video. Now I can see what I need to do for adding a bent shaft to my paddles. gotta make some straight shaft paddles for canoe journeys this year, before I try the tricky stuff.


#5 Sat, 06/05/2010 - 7:58pm


Here's my paddles in progress....got 5 more to do.


#6 Thu, 06/10/2010 - 3:33pm



hmmm...seems like the picture didn't post last time. I'll try this again.


#8 Fri, 06/11/2010 - 8:47am


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