Anyone who builds their own boat is a real builder, The End. Yeah, I know old you-know-who made the remark in jest, but I still just had to say it. :D

Then I got a kick out of Bill's "advice" to build a "real" paddle while Robert was at it. LOL! But as a devout wielder of The Stick, lemme just say this too....

Some folks pick up the GP and become instant converts. Not me. My initial experience with the stupid thing was the proverbial peashooter in a gunfight. It took a full year before it finally came to life in my hands, and I probably never would have stuck with it if not for John Caldeira's ceaseless demonstration of how effective it was. Plus, there was the ever-tantalizing siren song of an easily homemade, traditionally flavored, and inexpensive alternative to the hideous store-bought carbon fiber Euro monstrosities, shudder. Now that I "get it", there's no going back. I occasionally play with a Euro blade, usually by some freak accident, and it's like doing penance and makes me a more ardent GP extremist than ever.

And another thing: I get more convinced all the time that a new conventional wisdom needs to be enacted and passed into rule-of-thumb, to wit, that no first homemade paddle is going to be a home run, or at least, it's gonna be so rare as to disregard it as a possibility. It takes two or three or four before you produce one that's truly a contender for being as good or better than what you can buy. But it's definitely worth the trouble, for then paddles suddenly become easy enough to obtain that you can really start to play around with blade design, length, grip style, etc., etc., etc., to find what you really like best. Plus they look much better, especially in homemade boats.