Shaping and art ideas

I rounded the shaft by marking using this rounding jig similar to Jim Michalak's, but using screws 2 3/8" apart and holes centered 1" apart for the pencils. The jig follows the taper and marks where to plane each corner so it's eight sided. 

I further planed off the corners to create a 16 sided shaft. From there I used 80 grit strips of paper, holding each side sanding side to side to round out the shaft. Overall about two hours of work and a bit of sweat but not too difficult. The handles (not shown) were done the same way.

To shape the blades I drew a center line and again hand planed each to a 1/4" beveled edge, checking every few minutes with a 6" straight edge and finishing off with a half sheet pad sander. I further tapered and rounded the shaft past the neck where they sandwich the blades to about 1/4" thick. 

 I sanded everything down with medium grit than fine grit.

I traced art work on each blade which I will fill with colored pencils similar to the dory's art, using water edge plants to stay with the Sundew theme.

From oar design to wood

Time to start cutting blanks. I followed the general layout shown by Jim Michalak, centering the longer piece that would form the center and drawing the two shorter blanks at mirror ends.

I cut out the center first and decided the fit the hard wood tips before gluing the blanks together. I added a decorative curve, clamped the pine blank and scrap red oak together and them simultaneously with a heavy scroll saw blade so they'd be a good fit. I mixed up a bit of epoxy thickened with oak saw dust and fit into the blades. The results are below. 

 After cutting the blanks on a bandsaw, I carefully aligned the pieces together and drilled a hole for a finish nail in the tripled part of the blade and in the loop that that would keep everything aligned after the glue was applied and clamped. I was low on epoxy, so used Elmer's waterproof wood glue--which I've found works fine as long as the wood doesn't become saturated with water and there's no serious loads. After the glue set, I marked and cut out the taper and handles using bandsaw. The completed oar blanks are below ready for rounding.  

Oars for Sundew-design

It's been too long since I made a post--too busy enjoying Sundew and other things that get in the way. I've been using a heavy pair of West Marine oars cut down to 7'3" from 8'. They certainly work but have no flex and aren't a good match for the boat. So I've designed to build a set of oars.

I remember building a set nearly 20 years ago out of one piece of wood per oar. One of them warped badly so I don't consider them a success. This time I wanted something light, a bit springy, with better wood and laminated to resist warping. 

Figuring out the length was pretty easy--I like to row with overlapping hands but even than 7'3" was just a bit too long. This new set would be 7' long. Fortunately this matched the recommendation I used from John Leather's Clinker Boatbuilding of half the distance between the locks plus overlap all multiplied by 25/7. For Sundew that's (43"/2 + 2") x 25/7 = 83.9" or just call it 7'. Nice!

Next was my current blades of 5 1/2" by 24" are also a lot more grip than I need and the wind tends to catch them--so I wanted longer narrower blades, perhaps 28" by 4 1/2". 

I found an excellent article by Jim Michalak on oar-building that I'm going to adapt (see

http://www.boatbuilding-links.de/Jim-Michalak/oar-building-and-rowing.htm). He laminates three pieces of standard 1"x 6" good quality pine for each oar. I'll look for some quarter cut at a hardware store, but the lamination will probably minimize warping even if they are flat cut. 

I prefer slightly large tapered handles 1 1/2" to 1 1/4" diameter. John Welsford recommends offsetting oar handles a bit so it's easy to feel the current position of the blade--I'll decide later. I'll also add a hardwood tip to the blade for durability. The loom will remain square to add counterbalancing weight. 

The final dimensions are as follows: