There is something to be said for form, and it would be out of form to paddle a Cedar canoe with a plastic paddle. Does not even nature teach you this? It would be like wearing rubber boots to a cathedral.
I call my brother who has access to cabinet-grade lumber, and he sends me pieces of Basswood. The Basswood glows white in the pale light of the shop, one piece with grain tight and straight like freehanded pencil lines, while the other with grain that arcs out opposite sides from an invisible line in the center, like the wake of a swimming beaver.
I draft a slightly modified Beavertail pattern from an old paddle I have lying around. I soften the shoulders to shorten the blade slightly, and determine the length of the paddle by the old rule—by measuring the distance from floor to somewhere between my chin and nose. Since the grain runs slightly diagonally across the board, I can eke two Beavertails out of a single ten foot piece of lumber with three feet left over. With thickened epoxy, I glue a quarter inch Ash stiffener onto the shaft.
One cool April evening when the Redbuds are out, I walk out and begin to shape the blades, first with a hand plane, slimming them to three-eighths of an inch, tapered slightly to the edges and to the tip. I polish the shoulders where the blade disappears into the shaft to look the bottom side of a limb emerging from the trunk. With a sharp spokeshave and chisel, I cut the valley into the grip where the tips of my fingers will rest, then round the butt that will absorb the sweat from my palm. With a combination of spokeshave and plane, I shape the shaft to an oval, in such a way that my fingers will be pulling on the narrow side when paddling. Several days later, satisfied, I begin to sand, working my way through the sandpaper—80 grit, 120, 220.
I deliberate as to finishes for several weeks, knowing that I could take the cheap way out and give them several coats of spar varnish and be done. The traditional route of Linseed oil sounds more appealing, however, and I follow the recipe: one coat every day for a week, another coat every week for a month, sanding between coats beginning with 220 grit and working up to 400, then finishing with a wadded paper bag as my sandpaper. Since Linseed Oil is not mildew resistant or entirely water resistant, I go yet another step, and seal the paddles with three coats of Johnsons’ paste wax, applying it liberally, letting it sit for ten minutes, then polishing vigorously with a rag. Once finished, they have a yellow hue and a satiny feel like hard velvet and smell like a boat shop. Water beads up and races itself to run off the blade.
There are different styles of paddles, but if a man could only own one paddle, he should own a Beavertail, which has a rounded tip with uniform blade width, then tapering off high into the handle. I mentioned that I figured the length of my paddle by the old rule, but others say that all paddle designs should have the same length shaft and you can tack whatever blade design onto it you like, determining the length of the shaft by sitting on a chair and measuring the distance between the seat and the bridge of your nose.
The summer is burned away and it is the first of September before I take my paddles out for the first time. I sit in the bow seat—the forward seat—and paddle the canoe with stern forward. I dig in with the paddle, digging deep for speed, crossing over, then attempting the J-stroke, the bow-pry, and a backstroke. I do not admit it to myself then, but I am disappointed that I shortened the blade by way of narrow shoulders, and wish the shaft would be more flexible, the blade edges sharper. They feel chunky, and fat, and noisy, they could have plenty of wood taken from them sacrificing only weight, and performance would have spiked.
It is difficult to decide which is more enjoyable—building paddles or using them. I had the lumber, perhaps even the time, so I cut out two more paddles; one from Ash, and the other form the remaining Basswood.
Out of Ash, I cut an Ottertail pattern. It had a long narrow blade with stooped shoulders that narrowed towards a square tip. I used cherry for the shaft stiffener—this time only a 3/16”—and laminated accents into the blade, partially because my lumber wasn’t wide enough, and partially because I could. I was merciless to this paddle, as Ash is heavier, and cut away any wood I could do without. I cheated and used a power hand plane to slim the blade, as the catastrophic grain would dull the sharpest hand plane in a matter of minutes. I used the spokeshave to sharpen the edges of the blade to less than an eighth inch.
Out of the remaining Basswood, I cut a stubby, wide paddle called a Guide or a Whitewater paddle, designed for shallow water or moving lots of water fast. I position the blade over the unique grain to have the wake of the grain following the profile of the blade, the grain prophetic of how its wake will look later in the water. Cherry goes for these shaft-stiffeners, too, and I thin this paddle down so it weighs less than 20 ounces, planing the blade to less than a quarter inch and tapering the edges to a sharp edge that will slice through the water. Where the Cherry stiffener melts into the blade, I shape to look like a spear-point, the tip pointed to the depths of the river.
I rub Tung oil into them, following the same sequence as the Linseed on the Beavertails. Tung oil gives a more natural, clear finish as opposed to the yellow finish of Linseed oil. When finished they glow in the light like they had a light inside themselves, the cherry glowing red, the Ash, with its catastrophic grain, glinting at all angles.
When I dip these paddles into the deep pools of a backwater in October, I can feel the difference of the thin blades. I cannot decide which is nicer—the Ottertail or the Guide. While the Beavertails do all of it somewhat well, these two have specific purposes: The Ottertail for deep pools and slow, quiet, or stand-up paddling. The Guide paddle will get you there yesterday, especially if you lean into it; the featherweight paddle is as light as wind in the hands.
The Ottertail purls quietly, its tapered shaft blade silently gaining purchase in the water. I lay the paddle on its edge to use as a rudder, and the canoe obeys and spins as we float around the sharp corner by the rock walls. A Wood Duck flushes from the behind the exposed roots of a sycamore and climbs into the blue afternoon sky. Another quarter mile, another bend, and I float within twenty yards of a flock of turkeys before they spook. You just have to love it.