Shawn,

Have you thought of making a one piece shaft this way but have the oval switch 45 degrees in the middle for making a feathered paddle? If you change the width of 4 of the pieces at the midpoint it should be very easy to accomplish.

You should also be able to taper the ends of the shaft so that the hollow center closes up.

I've been meaning to try this but only got as far as laying up a 4" sample shaft. The sample was VERY light and strong.

Don Beale has tried it too. I was thinking that he might have made some complete paddles late last year.

Let us know how you like them. Got any actual photos of them yet?

Mike

: After reading the WoodenBoat article on the Bird's Mouth Technique for making
: hollow spars, I thought, "Hey, that could be used for paddle
: shafts".

: The magic of the bird's mouth technique is that the pieces are all
: self-aligning and no special jigs or fixtures are needed.

: So, last night, I laid up my first one.

: I used 6 strips of 1/4" x 7/16" spruce, and 2 strips of 1/4" x
: 11/16" spruce (to make it oval). One narrow edge of each strip had a
: 45* rabbet cut in it to receive the corner of the adjacent piece.

: Notice that I increased my strip sizes from those shown to give me an overall
: paddle shaft size of about 1 1/8" x 1 3/8". The sizes shown are
: for a shaft sized for my wife, which I'll lay up tonight.

: I used 8 SS hose clamps and a generous assortment of spring clamps to hold it
: all together. When it was all clamped (ends tightly clamped, middle
: loosely clamped) I grabbed the ends where you'd place your hands with
: screw clamps and twisted a 65* or so right feather into the shaft. Voila!
: A hollow, feathered shaft. I just need to figure out a nice way to plug
: the ends where they're exposed at the blades.

: I also plan to lay up a few straight shafts to build Greenland paddles or
: take-apart paddles.

: Shawn