: I have an old paddle with severe tip wear - it didn't have hard
: tips and is starting to delaminate; soon it will need surgery.

: What is the best wood for tips? I have oak, cherry, ash but no
: maple, although I can get some. How are the tips fastened to the
: paddle: should I use a mortise, biscuits or will simple dowels
: do OK?

If I have a choice, I prefer honduras mahogany, though it's awfully expensive now days. Most any easily worked hardwood that's moderately rot resistant will do, though oily woods like white oak and teak are hard to reliably attach with such a small glue area. I just use thickened (wth microfibers) epoxy and lightly clamp so there is a decent width glue line, the extra epoxy gives a little flexibility to the joint, allows the epoxy to bend a bit with impacts. You do have to roughen the glued surfaces up a bit to give the glue some "tooth" to glue too, also dramaically increases the glue area this way. The grain of the tips goes 90 degrees to the grain in the paddle btw.

Bill H.