Carving Traditional Canoe Paddles

A few years back I made my prototype Mystic River Tandem canoe. I wanted to make some paddles for it an bought some walnut. The walnut sat for years. I finally got to the project.

I elected to make two slightly different traditional paddle forms from solid wood. The more familiar is a standard "beaver tail" shape, which is nearly oval but with the greatest width concentrated closest to the tip.

The other shape is a "willow leaf". This is a bit narrower with the greatest width concentrated up nearest the top of the blade.

For the willow leaf blade I decided to give it a bit of a "stem" ridge running down the centerline. Because I thought it looked cool. This suggested using more hand tools in the final shaping

On the beaver tail I opted for a more oval cross section with the hint of a crease at the centerline. I used a right angle grinder for most of the shaping.

I drew up some shapes and used my CNC machine to make some patterns out of cardboard.

I don't have a jointer so I prepped the wood initially with a handheld power plane. I put a mahogany spline across the tip to reinforce it against splitting.

The table saw made the straight cuts for the shaft and then I tapered the blade on the bandsaw. The power plane then took off the bulk of the remaining material.

I used a variety of hand tools to shape the stem of the willow leaf, switching to the right angle grinder for the beaver tail.

After final shaping with hand tools, I sanded to 220 grit and applied three coats of varnish. This was sanded again with 220 and another coat of varnish applied to finish.

I haven't weighed the paddles yet. They are a bit on the heavy side, I could have made them thinner, or used a softwood instead of walnut.