A Simple Pair of Seven-Foot Oars

[BobSmalser]

These are for the wedding-gift sailboat to the oldest son, so the family consensus is that store-bought oars or my cruder, painted workboat oars won

[BobSmalser]

After cutting out with the saber saw, I square and fair the edges with hand planes and spoke shave. You

[BobSmalser]

I finish the beveling with planes and spoke shave. I prefer to face plane the blades first to their penciled tapers, followed by spokeshaving the transition to its lines

[adla]

amazing! :shock: it's one thing to "do" and another to explain so well the why and how....very very very very nice!

a.

[Stump]

:shock: WOW :shock:

[Greg Luckett]

Bob,

I really like what you have done and also that you have shared these great pictures. I am saving all of this thread so that when I get a chance I can try my hand at building some too.

Thanks

[Mike Pennington]

Bob,

Thanks for the lesson, it's posts like this that make Frank's site so nice to visit. Excellent pair of oars, very fine work.

Mike

[BobSmalser]

Here's an exchange from elsewhere suitable for the record on oar making:

I don't want to ruin your enthusiasm but I think that anyone contemplating a similar project would be well advised to choose a harder and tougher wood species. Ash, oak, hickory, hackberry will make tough durable oars. Sassafrass is nice for ultralight versions. I really do not think that western red cedar is going to perform acceptably no matter what you do to enhance it. Port Orford cedar might work and Alaskan yellow cedar (both of which are much denser than western red cedar). Cypress is much stronger than western red cedar but I still don't think it adequate for oars.

Thanks for the input....but actually, most commercial oars in the US are made of basswood.

When you compare basswood to WRC....WRC is 16% lighter and more elastic...but is comparable in all strength factors except perpendicular to grain (where an oar is stressed), where WRC is actually stronger.

And, of course, these USDA tests are with storebought, kilnburnt 8 rings/inch stock, and my application used air dried, 20 rings/inch old growth (not difficult to find out here), which is significantly stronger and more elastic.

I think I described at least the West Coast choices and their attributes and shortcomings pretty well...as well a a couple tricks to enhance WRC....tricks useful to folks for other purposes. All your choices...even Sassafras...are extremely heavy compared to Sitka or WRC. Depends on how you are gonna use the oar....I provide my boats with a sturdy DF boathook that's handy as a lever or bludgeon if the users need to pry themselves off an obstacle or repel boarders.

I agree that WRC isn't an optimum choice...but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for these particular ones to fail in this pleasure application.

Now...if you are talking oars for the workboats I make to support recovery of this sunken oldgrowth stock...we are of the same mind...bulletproof..and attendantly heavy:

[Frank Hagan]

Great information once again, Bob! I plan to expand on the "Building Oars" information here on messing, inlcuding some scantlings for the oar patterns if I can get either permission to use them from Woodenboat or make some of my own.

For everyone else, Bob has graciously agreed to allow us to make permanent pages of some of his posts, and "Building Oars" is the first page I've made. All the new pages can be found from our new "Articles" section from the Home page, or you can surf directly to it by going to http://www.messing-about.com/articles/oars.html

[Stump]

Frank,

Great to see the new article, I was just looking there the other day and thinking about the wealth of information that could be gleened from the forums and put there for easy access. The knowledge and skill of these guys and gals amazes me.

Hope you find time to add more

[Frank Hagan]

I will ... but I was surprised how long it took to adapt Bob's great post to my format! I'm still working on a way to make it easier to print out or save to disk.

I plan to include, with the original poster's permission, of course, some more of Bob's posts, including his great tutorial on chopping mortises, re-conditioning hand planes and a few others. Barry has also provided some great information on paints and applications that I might ask to use for an article. And I want to adapt some mast making information too.

[BobSmalser]

Here's the finished product along with the boat hook for when something sturdier is required:

I like soft cotton on delicate hands doing heavy work, so I whip the handles in pure cotton twine soaked in water like the leather. Leathers are baseball-stitched and the skived button mounted with brass box-hardware tacks, making the buttons removable if required by some oarlocks.

They'll dry out and shrink up a couple days in the sun, then I'll douse the leather in Bee Oil followed by Westco's beeswax boot treatment. The oversize oarlocks will also be leather lined to minimize denting of the oars.

[Greg Luckett]

Leathers for oars have been one of my hold ups. What is the proper and/or best ways to prepare oars for use?

What sort of leather is used? Where can I get it? I have not found much information on this subject, but lots of references to it. No "how to" information

[Barry Pyeatt]

Another wonderful post Bob. Very well done and illustrated. Also very timely for me as I am just about to start making a pair of oars, also from Western Red Cedar. I was concerned about the blade tips but inserting a spline thru the end of the blade is a great solution. I have only one concern for anyone doing so. The woods have to be stable or they may split with seasonal movement of the different woods. Perhaps a little addition about wood movement would be in order for inclusion in the article. Valuable considerations for the novice as many a project ends up being a disappointment after a years exposure to the weather changes. I've seen a lot of builders saddened by the splitting out of adjacent woods or even the same wood species run cross grain to one another.

I am also interested in making up a boat hook and was admiring your workmanship. I would appreciate your thoughts on function and design.

I think it is great that Frank will include this as a permanent article on the Forum. Thanks for contributing it to the archive.

[BobSmalser]

The same WB article that has the oars of this pattern also has a piece on stitching oar leathers.

Chandleries have oar leather kits but they are too spendy....buy vegetable-tanned tooling leather off of Ebay. Other tanning methods won't shrink when you soak it....which you want when trimming out a boat's spreaders, pads, etc in leather.

Few woods on earth are as stable as airdried, q-sawn WRC...I wouldn't be too concerned about the epoxy splines as all the flatsawn basswood Feather-Brand storebought oars have them. That's who I copied.

[Guest]

Bob, nice work and indeed a jewel along with this forum and its true leadership and the members here. Thanks again as there is just not enough thanks for both the folks here and Bob, and Dave's contribution. BUt it does take each one here to make it all work. Thumbs up for everyone, from my little corner of the banks.

[Greg Luckett]

The same WB article that has the oars of this pattern also has a piece on stitching oar leathers.

Chandleries have oar leather kits but they are too spendy....buy vegetable-tanned tooling leather off of Ebay. Other tanning methods won't shrink when you soak it....which you want when trimming out a boat's spreaders, pads, etc in leather.

Thanks Bob. I did not find usable sized leather as you describe on Ebay, but the WB reference has proven very valuable. I have done a Google search for the leather with more success. Thankyou!!!

[BobSmalser]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=28132&item=8115232442&rd=1

...and dozens more.

Vegetable-tanned tooling leather.

Tandy Leather sells it by mail for bigger dollars...where I used to buy it before Ebay came along.

[Greg Luckett]

Bob,

The search on Ebay for exactly what you described, "vegetable-tanned tooling leather", yielded two usable options, one from scraps and another for a full skin. I tried bidding on the full skin but someone is using the auto bid option and I hate bidding that way. I do not use Ebay for that reason, mostly. The Google search resulted in exactly what you described and I have ordered about 20 square feet of 3 to 4 oz. Is that the right weight? Anyway, thanks for directing me to the correct type of leather as that was a major part of what I needed to know. I can tell you that I have an extensive library on boat building and none of the books have details about the proper preparation of oars. Searching on Google yielded little either. Your reference to the WB yeilded very good information with pictures and discussions.....exactly what I needed. Thankyou.

Perhaps someone should write a book with details like you provided on oars, block planes, etc., but on oar making and all the details. The current books have some construction stuff for oars and paddles but lack depth and detail of how to finish, size, etc. Leathers get a mention in all the books but darn little else. I am going to be on the lookout for books describing oar technologies from the 18th or 19th centuries. For instance, square vs. round. Another option I have seen but cannot find again is using rope/line. I like that idea a lot too.

I believe the information is available somewhere...I just need to keep seeking. You have been a big help to me....thanks again.

[BobSmalser]

Port Townsend Foundry...with some minor modifications for a 2" rise.