: 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

OMG! Are there no secrets here? Kurt, I have always felt that I will not have "arrived" until I built a stripper. That's just me keeping the pressure on myself to finally get one of Nick's strippers built. That said, be prepared for new additions to the anglophone lexicon once I start setting the forms into permanent position, if Bill knows anything about the process. I am pretty famous round these parts for imparting loud and voracious forms of outrageous monologue when discovered working alone at night in the garage with something cold happening on the side. ;)

: 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.

I dunno, Kurt, I tried my first stick paddling upstream and it didn't compare well with the huge carbon fibre buckets I use for upstream paddling. That said, I am sure I will love my stick once I get 'er done.

: 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.

You are so absolutely right on this regard. My new stick will be as interesting as the kayak. If they don't look perfect to anyone who sees the after all that work, I'll give them an ocular corrective maneuver to help them see straighter, then I know they will love my boat and stick. ;)

Robert N Pruden