: I need to re-inforce the blade of a wooden paddle for whitewater paddling. I
: would like to find a source of the lightest possible fiberglass cloth that
: would work. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Hans Underdahl

Defender (www.defenderus.com) has cloth that is anywhere from 1 to 0.75 ounces per square yard. When you get to their website, drop to the bottom of the opening page and click on the button for "search the store".

Search for the words " angel hair " and you'll go right to this product. For small quantities the price is about one dollar for a yard. If you buy 10 yards or more the price goes down. If you jsut want a lightweight single layer on each side of a paddle, you would probably need only a yard, but buying two yards or more makes sense, as the shipping and handling costs are the same, and the extra can be used on other paddles.

Fibreglast Company

(http://www.fibreglast.com/ReinforcementPage.htm#Chopped Strand Mat, #248 and #250)

has a thin mat the call a "veil" which appears to be even lighter than their three-quarters of an ounce mat. Those materials are in the neighborhood of $6 a yard.

All of these materials are not much thicker than a coat of housepaint when they are applied with a very thin layer of epoxy resin. with careful work, the added weight to your paddle would be only an ounce or two.

The cloth I've always heard recommended is a single ply of 4 ounce cloth on each side of the paddle blade. This is not a very heavy cloth, but it is much thicker than these others I've mentioned, and is frequently used on the hulls of the kayaks and canoes. It could be that this material is specified for paddles simply because scraps from building the boat are commonly available to those builders who also build paddles.

. You could apply several layers of the lighter weight fabric to increase the amount of glass fibers, and correspondingly increase the strength of the covering on your paddle blades.

Hope this helps.

Paul G. Jacobson