> I've been reading the paddle ideas for awhile (but have too lazy to add anything) until I saw this post.I have built a pairs of oars and 2 paddles using the idea of foam as the "hollow shaft". I prefer a thicker shaft so used 3/4" square foam with 1'4" red cedar strips all around. As mentioned here, I also used wood at each end for extra stiffness at the blade area. One of the paddles is a greenland style, while the other is a squirt psaddle I made at the request of a friend. I feathered his blades 45 degrees at the blade rather than have to deal with a scarf joint along the shaft. For extra stiffness on the squirt paddle I used some ash. I only put glass on the blades to stiffen the laminations of cedar, mahogany and ash. This squirt paddle ended not being very light compared to a touring paddle, but compared to several squirt paddles I've seen, it's about 1/2 the mass.

Also, could you use copper pipe instead of pvc for a hollow shaft mold. There are several types of mold release wax that are used for vaccuum bagging and so forth. Wouldn't these work if applied liberally before making the carbon laminations? All of these are great ideas.

> For a "hollow" shaft I was going to try using a length of
> styrofoam (say 5/8" square) as a core and laminate cedar on all four
> sides (1-1/2" x 1/2" for top and bottom and 7/16" x
> 5/8" on either side, length to suit) to create a rectangular shaft
> that I could round off the corners to suit.

> It might be possible to use a short section of hardwood in the
> "core" to create a ferrule of types for take-apart shaft.

> It would not be too difficult to build in a taper either. With a taper,
> the styrofoam could be more trouble that it is worth - a couple of well
> placed wooden spacers would probably do fine.

> I like the idea of using a florescent tube as a core and laminating up a
> shaft. I wonder how much weight of resin/glass would be required to get
> the stiffness/strength as compared with wood which is very rigid relative
> to its weight.

> For the blade I was going to use 1/8" luaun "panels" cut to
> shape and joined stitch&glue or tape&glue style. I figure if the blades
> are concave in shape they should be very rigid and need the minimum of
> fiberglass for strength. The shaft itself, if extended a bit, could supply
> a lot of the strength in the blade as well.

> Anyway, just rambling for now. I will have to do something this winter
> though.

> Hank