Laminating the Steering Paddle

The cuts Ray and I made on his table saw the other day relieved a bottleneck in this build.  Until the lumber was ripped, I couldn't loft the patterns on the plywood, and I couldn't laminate the steering paddle.  In other words, I couldn't work on anything but finding trees to use for the outrigger, poles and spars.

Applying epoxy to the mating edges

Well, that's finally over.  I haven't had the opportunity (or audacity?) to take over the entire living room for the lofting step yet, but I'm under way on the paddle.  I borrowed a pump of the hand-me-down System 3 epoxy from my brother's Teal project and clamped the steering paddle blank together this evening.  As I write this, it's sitting there on the plastic-covered kitchen table, waiting for the epoxy to cure.

You really have to squint to see it
as a paddle at this point

It doesn't look much like a paddle at this stage.  It's blocky and thick, and it takes some imagination to envision the slender, streamlined leaf shape of the finished product within.  I'm sure it will take many, many hours of shaping to get there, but I'm game.  I think I'll let the epoxy cure for 72 hours, then cut the profile out with a hand saw and begin peeling away everything that's not a paddle.

A quick word on the process..... Why glue the paddle together, rather than just cutting it out of a single large piece of wood?  Well, I've been told that laminated sections are less susceptible to warping than solid wood, due to the mixed grain orientation of the various pieces.  I'm hoping that's true - I'm not sure the grain orientation I chose was optimal, but it allowed me to work around the knots I have to deal with.

It's also cheaper to work with 2x4's than it would be to buy a single piece capable of containing the whole paddle profile.  But I have a scrap 2x12 lying around that I might use to make a second steering paddle, so that I can see whether there's a difference in their longevity. 

Anyway, it feels exciting to be past the table saw bottleneck.  Hopefully, there will be time for lofting later this week, and then I can start the plywood cuts.  I've also prepared enough cedar and fir pieces to make a pair of regular non-steering paddles.  So I've entered a new, busy period of the build, and I'm idle no more.  It feels good!