Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own

Front Cover
Firefly Books, 2001 - Crafts & Hobbies - 159 pages

This book combines practical woodworking technique with practical canoe use experience... [It] covers every single aspect of canoe paddle building.
-- Sawdust and Shavings

Despite the growing interest in making paddles and canoes, it can be difficult to find reliable information on that craft -- except for this book. First published more than a decade ago and having sold 35,000 copies, Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own is the ultimate modern guide to the traditional craft for both the how-to beginner and the skilled woodworker.

In Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own, longtime canoeist and woodworker Graham Warren provides detailed information and guidance to make a canoe paddle that will be used with confidence and cherished for generations.

The book is thoroughly illustrated with photographs, line drawings and plans with measurements for:

  • How to make a paddle having a single blade, a bent shaft, or double blades
  • How to protect a paddle with oil or varnish
  • What to look for when test-driving a paddle
  • How to decorate a paddle
  • How to care for and repair a paddle.

The authors include an appreciation of the evolution of the paddle plus a special chapter by renowned canoe-buuilding teacher David Gidmark which celebrates paddle-making in the native tradition.

From inside the book

Contents

Make your own paddles
6
Diversity Evolution of the canoe paddle
8
Prehistoric paddles
9
Copyright

60 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

David Gidmark is the coauthor of Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Building Your Own, and author of Birchbark Canoe: Living Among the Algonquins, both published by Firefly Books.

Bibliographic information